The First Responder
by The Queen of Mean
Summary: They say that money is the root of all evil... Or perhaps, the lack of it could be considered the basis of all evil. Either way, this Gotham City paramedic finds herself in way over her head when the Joker makes her an offer he would not let her refuse. Rated M for adult situations, violence, and language. **Warning: much darker than the Jayde series**
1. The Terrorist

Disclaimer: I do not own any DC characters or locations. I only own the OC's.

The inside of the 59th Street Diner seemed to have caught the highly contagious disease that had been spreading through Gotham like a chaotic, poorly contained mutation of the flu. Every other time she had been there, the inhabitants had been chatting noisily and eating, laughing about this and that, without a care in the world, without so much as a glance toward the huge glass windows that lined the front of the restaurant. But now, as Leila stepped inside, it became immediately obvious that something was incredibly different; she did not need much time to deduce why. In fact, seeing how Gotham had been in a near state of open anarchy for the past week, she found it downright surprising that anyone was there at all.

There was a rather obvious sense of barely restrained panic in both the patrons and employees alike, and as Leila and her crew stepped into the diner, she could not help but notice the way several people turned their heads quickly to look over at the doors. It almost could have been mistaken as a collective, compulsive tick.

"Geez..." murmured a voice just next to her. "It's almost like they expect him to come waltzing in any second. Like the next step in his elaborate plan is to shoot up a lower east-side diner..."

Glancing toward her shoulder, Leila rolled her eyes at Matt's callous attempt at sarcasm as he flicked a fuzzy ball of runaway gauze from the front of his black uniform shirt. Just minutes ago, she had caught him glancing up and down the street nervously as he climbed out from the back of the ambulance. She chose not to mention this for the time being.

"Yeah," she agreed, shaking her head. "But can you really blame them? He hasn't exactly been predictable."

Beside her, Matt had just opened his mouth to reply, but Leila's attention was suddenly shifted to the pocket of her black pants, where she could feel her cell phone buzzing away. With a roll of her eyes, she reached down for it, sliding her fingers into the material to retrieve the vibrating device and upon pulling it out, she noticed that the caller ID was currently displaying a number that began with the digits '1-808'. A low groan escaped her, causing Matt to turn his head and glance down at the phone in her hand. Though before he could comment or get a good look at the number, Leila pressed her thumb to the red button and slid the phone back into her pocket. She could feel his frown on the side of her face but did not acknowledge his expression, instead taking the opportunity to glance up at the overhead menu board with a sigh.

"I don't even know why I bother looking at the menu anymore," she grumbled in an effort to distract him, her eyes falling onto her usual choice. Beside her, Matt was doing the same, nodding as he folded his arms across his chest.

"Chili right? Hold the sour cream?" he asked, grinning sideways at Leila as she grunted a laugh.

"You know me too well."

Within moments, a rather frizzy haired, notably anxious waitress walked over to the counter, pulling a small booklet of tickets from the pocket of her waist apron, her eyebrows raising as she recognized the familiar team of paramedics. A pen followed the book of tickets and she clicked the top of it several times too many as she first looked to Jay, the ambulance driver and oldest of the team.

"Hey, guys," she greeted them with an air of familiarity, her words escaping in the midst of a heavy sigh. "What'll it be tonight?"

With an upward glance at the menu board, Jay opened his mouth to answer her, just as Leila and Matt reached the counter on either side of him. However almost the moment he began to speak, the small walkie talkie hooked to the pocket of his uniform cargo pants gave a loud noise of radio static, followed shortly by a female voice.

_'Motor vehicle accident at the intersection of 37__th__ avenue and Mott Street, Code 3, male driver priority two, in route to Gotham Municipal, requiring EMT response, two female __victims, priority two and three.' _

Jay turned to either side of him, where his team members stood watching, before he turned on his heel and marched quickly toward the door, leaving Matt to follow him closely, and Leila to turn back to the counter where the waitress was watching with a blank, almost bored expression on her face. Her face formed into what she hoped was an apologetic smile before she too turned and followed in her teammates' wake, out onto the curb where the back doors to the ambulance were already thrown open and awaiting her. She climbed in without hesitation, pausing only momentarily to swing the metal doors shut behind her, then turning to sit down across from Matt, who was rubbing his growling stomach with one hand, a stony expression lingering on his face.

"Kinda hard to believe we still have all the usual accidents to deal with, on top of all this Joker shit..." he grumbled a few moments after the ambulance had pulled away from the curb with a sharp lurch, the sirens now screaming noisily, rhythmically atop the truck overhead.

With a flick of her hand, Leila tossed her long, heavy ponytail over her shoulder, her eyes glancing quickly to the small, upper window of the ambulance, where she could see the red and white flashing lights reflecting brightly against the blurred, passing buildings. She cleared her throat, to raise her voice over the sound of the sirens.

"Just be glad we haven't had to deal with anything directly related to that stuff," she told Matt, arching one of her dark eyebrows when he rolled his eyes. "We've been lucky so far. You heard what happened to Scott's truck the other day after the mess at Loeb's memorial."

Nodding, Matt reached behind him for a pair of sterile, blue latex gloves as the ambulance came to a rather abrupt halt. "I still can't believe he got fired for that. I mean, Dent of all people told him to beat it but does he say anything to Mitchell? Nope. Not a word." At this, he paused, tossing another pair of gloves over to Leila, before reaching out to the open the back doors. "He definitely wont be getting _my _vote next term."

As she slid the blue latex gloves onto her hands, a smile grin met her lips when she noticed how much easier this was for her now after doing it countless times over the past year. On Leila's first night as a paramedic for the Gotham City EMS team, she had been so nervous, almost to the point of hysteria on their first call, which coincidentally had also been to a traffic accident, though that particular scene had been much worse than the current. The bag of equipment had felt like a tackle box filled with solid lead as she had dragged it from the floor of the ambulance, all while the red, blue and white flashing lights from the police cars and other emergency vehicles around her acted like something of a strobe, disorienting her and making her near state of panic even more severe.

But after a solid year on the team, of working thirty-five, sometimes upwards of forty hours a week, Leila felt she could attend to a simple car accident with absurd ease. The bag of medical tools and equipment could have been filled with stuffed toys for all the notice she took of it's weight, and within moments, she was at Matt's side, where he was kneeling down at the crushed driver's side door, speaking in a soothing tone to the middle-aged woman behind the steering wheel. Leila did not stop to listen but instead moved quickly to the other side of the car, where she could see a younger girl bracing her left arm while tears streamed steadily down her face. Without hesitation, she pulled open the seemingly undamaged passenger door to the sedan and leaned down.

"Hi, honey, can you tell me your name?" she asked gently, watching the side of the girl's face as she glanced over to the left where Matt was beckoning to Jay for the stretcher. Turning her head again, the girl's eyes were wide with panic.

"Is my mom okay?" she asked quickly, her voice frantic. Leila remained patient and leaned into the car, reaching across the girl to her left side, being infinitely careful not to nudge her injured arm while she unbuckled the seat belt.

"We're going to get her out of here and have a look over in the ambulance," she explained, using that gentle, calm voice she had developed and perfected over the past year. "But I need you to tell me your name, okay?"

"Haleigh," the girl finally answered distractedly, once again looking toward her left where Jay was wheeling up the stretcher and Matt was unbuckling the woman from her seat.

"Okay, Haleigh?" Leila used her name to catch her attention and distract her from the sight of her mother's blood dripping slowly along the far side of her neck. "Do you remember what happened?"

"We were just driving home and the light turned green and this _guy _just...hit us as we drove past this street," Haleigh began to explain, using her uninjured arm to point to her right, where she assumed the opposing street of the intersection lay. She did not seem to notice that the car had been hit so hard, it was now perpendicular to that street after making a full one-eighty degree spin. Leila did not tell her this, but instead turned her attention to her arm when Haleigh gave a hiss of pain. "I think it's broken..." she whimpered, her large blue eyes again welling up with tears.

"Alright, well, here's what we're gonna do, okay?" Leila started, turning a bit to face the girl and seat herself gingerly on the edge of the car, with her back to the dashboard, while at the same time reaching into the massive, organized bag of bandages for a makeshift sling. "I'm going to have you put your arm in this sling until we can get you out of the car," she then explained, moving again to place her knee on the floor of the car between the girl's feet, to get a better, head-on look at what she was doing. "Then once we get you out, I'm going to walk you back to the ambulance so you can ride to the hospital with your mom. Everything sound alright to you?" Haleigh nodded hastily, lowering her head slightly so Leila could slide the strap of the sling onto the back of her neck.

After several whimpers and a few more tears, Leila managed to guide Haleigh's broken arm into the sling, before she removed herself from the car and reached out to help the girl to her feet, using gentle guidance for every step. It did not seem at first glance that Haleigh was injured in any other way, which she had to admit privately was rather fortunate as they walked quickly back to the ambulance; her mother did not look very good at all. It seemed the driver of the other vehicle had hit them at such a speed that the door and window next to her had buckled and shattered, sending a rather large shard of glass into the side of her face and crushing her left leg. Leila could not help but wonder how the firemen were able to open the severely damaged driver's side door without assistance from the 'Jaws of Life'.

The woman was laying on the stretcher with her neck in a sturdy brace, but seemed to be conscious as Haleigh and Leila approached, crying and whimpering through her pain as Matt and Jay hoisted the collapsible stretcher into the back of the ambulance.

"My daughter...Haleigh, is she alright?" she asked, her wide eyes swiveling up to Matt's face as he locked the wheels on the stretcher.

"Mom!" Haleigh cried out, and before Leila could insist on helping her, she reached out with her one usable hand to pull herself up into the back of the ambulance alongside her mother. "I'm right here, I'm fine!"

At the sound of her daughter's voice, the woman let out a relieved cry, holding out her left hand as far as she could beneath the strap holding her to the stretcher.

"Haleigh, I'm so sorry, sweetie..." she groaned, her tone strained and choked with pain and tears. "I didn't even see that other car."

"Hawkin, grab the doors," Matt instructed, shifting somewhat awkwardly around Haleigh and her mother's embracing hands, while he pulled a long measure of gauze and blue towels from a bin overhead. Immediately, Leila moved to comply and as she leaned out of back of the ambulance to slam shut the heavy doors, the siren and lights overhead once again exploded in a spectacle of sight and sound, though she did not flinch; it had been a long time since that noise had caused her to jump. Now it was just another part of her everyday life...and she _loved _it.

It was beyond probable that the sound of emergency sirens was not exactly a comforting experience to many people, as it likely brought about horrible memories of lost or injured loved ones, of traumatic times and terrifying moments. But to Leila, the earsplitting scream of the ambulance and fire truck sirens bouncing against the close buildings was something of a love to her, something that reminded her of all the hard work she put into school, of how proud her mother and father were of her career choice, even if it was not her original plan.

Within just a few minutes, the wheels of the massive, dark green and white ambulance were pulling into an emergency bay, where several nurses and an ER physician stood waiting, pulling stethoscopes from around their necks and preparing to receive their newest patients. Leila was the first to throw open the doors and jump down, reaching out with both hands to help Matt with lowering the stretcher's legs to meet the ground. A doctor in ugly green scrubs was at her shoulder in an instant.

"What do we have?" she asked, her tone professional yet calm. Leila took a step back to allow the stretcher room to turn around.

"Two females involved in a traffic accident," Leila started, pushing the back of the stretcher toward the wide, open doors leading to the inside of the hospital. "Priority two, lacerations to the face and neck, crush injuries on the left leg, no tachycardia, one-forty over ninety, otherwise stable. Younger female with a possible broken arm, priority three."

"Alright, people, let's get her in!" cried the doctor, reaching out both hands to grip the cotton mat on which the injured woman was laying, which she and a team of nurses transferred to one of the hospital's own stretchers, leaving the one belonging to the Gotham City EMS team behind. And with that, the team and their patient hurried off into the depths of the over-crowded emergency room, with a scared and confused Haleigh in their midst, leaving Leila and Matt quite alone, slightly out of breath but otherwise empty handed. With a sigh, Matt held up one dry bloody, gloved hand for a high-five from Leila, who grinned and swung out to meet him, their hands meeting with a satisfying smack of latex on latex.

"Good work, Rookie," he said, smirking as he reached out for the barren stretcher once he had discarded his gloves in a nearby bio hazard waste bin, to begin pushing it in front of him back toward the end of the hallway. "I think you might be finally catching on."

With a roll of her eyes, Leila shook her head, crossing over in front of him to help fold the legs of the stretcher back into position, to once again push it back into the ambulance. "Well, ya know, after a year of school, plus another year on the job, stuff starts to stick. Maybe with another couple years, I'll be able to move past 'rookie'!" she exclaimed jokingly, though before Matt could answer, she called out to Jay, who was already in the back of the truck, tossing out the bloody gauze and towels. "Oh, and thanks, Jay! I can't imagine what we'd do without you," she commented sarcastically, leaning against the open doors as Matt did the same opposite her. Inside the ambulance, Jay shrugged, holding up both gloved hands in an innocent gesture.

"Hey, you guys had it all under control," he said, dropping his pose to drag the top of his forearm across his glistening, bald pate. "Besides, that was an easy call. I could'a done that one by myself." Both Leila and Matt made noises of annoyance as Jay hopped down to the pavement between them.

"Oh, okay, so the next call, we'll just sit back and relax. Let you handle it all by yourself," Matt answered, climbing into the ambulance past Jay. Leila followed, grinning privately to herself as the two guys continued to bicker, but only for their voices to be interrupted by yet another fateful burst of static from the radio that was once again clipped to Jay's pocket. However, just as the team turned their attention to the call, expecting a different, though calm voice belonging to some 911 dispatcher, Leila, Jay and Matt all frowned in unison when a familiar, male voice came through instead.

"All units report to House 14 immediately," said the voice of their supervisor. "I repeat, all units report back to House 14 immediately."

As Leila looked at both Matt and Jay, she let her eyes bounce back and forth between them, watching as the two men did the same back at her. Her frown deepened as she motioned with one finger to the radio now resting in Jay's hand.

"Have either of you ever heard him do that before?" she asked, struggling to keep the hint of apprehension out of her voice as the two guys shook their heads confusedly. Matt was the first to answer verbally as he leaned down to secure the wheels of the stretcher.

"No, I don't think he's _ever _done that," he said, sitting up to look back down to where Leila and Jay stood on the pavement. "So we better haul ass over there. Jay, flip the lights on, let's go."

As Jay hurried up to the driver's seat of the ambulance, Leila copied Matt and sat down, forcefully attempting to ignore the vague sense of fear that had begun to well itself up in the pit of her stomach as the sirens and lights came to life overhead. Despite how comfortable she felt in the field of emergency medical care, no matter the situation, no matter how badly injured a victim was, or how severe the accident turned out to be, something about the urgency and somewhat randomness in Mitchell's voice over the radio had caused a rather surprising reaction from her more baser instincts. It had been quite a long time since she had experienced the sensation of panic, but with effort, she ignored the first flutters of this emotion, so she would not give this away to Matt when she spoke.

"Do you think something happened?" she asked, finally peeling off her own gloves to toss them into the bin across from her. "Like...with one of the other teams?"

Directly opposite her, Matt shrugged, turning his head to glance up and over his shoulder through the window, as if to gauge how fast Jay was driving by judging how quickly the buildings were sliding past. Leila did the same, noticing just then as a solid red traffic light passed overhead; it seemed Jay was feeling some of the same urgency.

"No idea, but I hope it's nothing serious," he replied, shaking his head, though a second later his blue eyes met hers, where she could now see some of her same apprehension reflected there. "Though I can't really imagine Mitchell calling us all back just to have a simple chit chat, you know what I mean?"

Leila could not dispute his logic, so she stayed quiet, temporarily lost in her own musings. Matt was right. It did not seem like their supervisor would recall all the teams on the street unless it was something really important, or to warn them of some unknown danger, and seeing how 'unknown danger' was at an all-time high lately in Gotham, she felt that perhaps her sense of growing fear was justified. She could just imagine Mitchell telling all the paramedics that they needed to evacuate their ambulances so they could be searched for bombs that had been possibly planted there in some cunning diversionary plan by the Joker. A moment later, Leila wrote this off, realizing that Mitchell would likely have just told them that over the radio, to save them from getting back into the trucks. No, nothing seemed to make sense to her at that time, every idea seemed wildly farfetched to the point of paranoia, so Leila gave up trying to guess and turned her attention to remaining calm and professional, just as she had been trained to do. It would not be long before she and her team were told the news.

Within only a few minutes, the ambulance slowed, gave a bounce as the wheels pulled into a parking lot, then stopped rather abruptly and within seconds, Matt and Leila unlatched the doors, only to stop short when their eyes found the scene that lay before them. The two monstrous firetrucks belonging to Firehouse 14 had flooded the parking lot, their drivers and crews all getting out and sharing the same looks of uncertainty as they glanced around. Nearly all of them were talking, huddled in their teams and Leila wondered if they were having the same paranoid ideas as she had been having just minutes before when Jay suddenly rounded the back of the ambulance.

"Parker just came over and said that Mitchell and Craig are going to brief us in the bay," he told them, his eyes glancing around at the other teams, who were obviously being told the same information a few yards away. "We should head up there now."

After climbing down, Leila followed Jay and Matt toward the lit station house, where the huge sliding metal doors bearing the massive number '14' had already been raised, exposing the inside of the docking bay where their ambulance and its two firetruck brothers were usually parked. Two men stood there, both wearing black uniforms not unlike Leila's, and both wore the same expression of extreme smugness, but also urgency as they watched their employees and co-workers walk toward them. All muttering came to an abrupt halt as the firemen and three paramedics reached the cover of the tall docking bay. Craig, the Captain of Firehouse 14 spoke first, his eyes glancing from face to face.

"I'm sure you're all wondering why we've called you back here, but Commissioner Gordon has asked for radio silence," he began, his tone quick and sharp. Another knot of nerves dropped into Leila's stomach and she glanced quickly over at the side of Matt's face. He did not do the same, but she could tell he felt her looking at him as a muscle near his jaw gave a tick. "It seems there is some sort of commotion down at the docks, between the Prewitt buildings and the bridges. Now, I know we were warned earlier about bomb detection being done along the bridges and tunnels, but I guess the Joker..." the Captain gave a short pause here as several hushed murmurings broke out amongst the small gathering of firemen. He continued, raising his voice over the noise."...was using that threat as a diversion. It's been confirmed that the bombs were placed in the lower decks of the two ferries, which are currently floating in the bay-"

"Are the people already on them?" one of the firemen interrupted abruptly, his eyes slightly widened as he stared at Captain Craig, who nodded quickly a moment later.

"Yes," he answered curtly. "One of the ferries is carrying civilians. The other is carrying a load of prisoners from the island. So the commissioner and the mayor have called all emergency staff down to the docks, to be on standby. The missing patients from Gotham General have been removed from the Prewitt building and are being evacuated to Gotham Municipal, so our EMT's are needed there now. Grayson," Craig paused, looking to Jay, who raised his eyebrows upon being addressed by his last name. "You take Hawkin and Park down there, find Captain Lee from House 8 and ask him where he wants you guys stationed. Ang, you take your team-"

Craig continued to rattle off orders, but Leila was no longer listening as she turned to follow Matt and Jay back toward the ambulance, her steps quick and light as she trotted ahead a few steps to hear what they were saying.

"Just figures this shit would happen," Matt was saying, glancing over when Leila reached his side. "We're the only team that hasn't had anything crazy happen this week and now we get called to _this," _he grumbled, once again flinging open the doors of the ambulance so Leila could climb in ahead of him and take her usual seat on the far side of the stretcher. She nodded distractedly, unsure of what exactly she was agreeing to as she had only been half listening to Matt. Relief was calming her nerves from earlier, but at the same time, newborn anxiety was seeping through her. From what she had gathered at the 'briefing', the two ferries had been rigged to blow up, but if they hadn't already been detonated, then what was the Joker waiting for? He had already displayed a knack for not caring about how many people he killed or how much property he destroyed, so what was stalling him now? Vaguely, Leila had the feeling that there was more to this situation than what the fire captain had so hastily explained.

Before the ambulance had even begun to slow, it became obvious that they had reached the docks, as Leila looked up at the window to find it practically glowing with flashing blue, red and white lights. The air beyond the truck was thick with shouting and sirens as other police cars and emergency vehicles approached around them and inside her chest, Leila could feel her heart banging away, her blood pounding in her ears. She could not imagine the sight that was about to greet her eyes.

A rush of muggy, salty air filled the ambulance as Matt pushed the doors open, the muffled sound of voices and sirens now magnified and cleared. Jay had apparently stopped the truck on the far side of a blocked two-lane street, directly across from the docks and as Leila followed Matt onto the pavement, she immediately turned her head toward the water. The bay was black under the late night sky, rippling as though paved with tiny gems, reflecting the lights from both the emergency vehicles and the temporary spotlights that had been set to point upward at the towering Prewitt building. As Leila stared out over it, she could make out the forms of the two ferries, floating helpless like bobbing corks. Just beside her, Matt let out a low whistle from between his teeth as he took in the same sight.

"I can't even imagine..." he murmured, shaking his head as his hands met his narrow waist. "Those people must be so scared."

Nodding, Leila was about to agree when suddenly Jay appeared at her side, accompanied by a man she had never seen before, though the stripes on his sleeve were unmistakable. He wore a harried, anxious expression and a bulletproof vest, emblazoned with large yellow letters spelling 'GCPD SWAT'. Without introducing himself, he pointed quickly up at the Prewitt building, which stood dark and solitary along the bank of the bay.

"We have SWAT teams in the building now securing floors," the man said, his voice hoarse and strained, apparently from having been shouting for the past two hours. "The Batman is in there now, attempting to capture the Joker," he went on, but at this, Matt broke in, pointing one hand out toward the water.

"What about the ferries?" he asked loudly, raising his voice momentarily as the firetruck from House 14 went past. "Are the bombs still active?" Turning her head again toward the SWAT team captain, Leila waited for his answer, hoping he would have some sort of good news. However, at Matt's question, his sweating face blanched slightly as he shook his head.

"No, and that's the catch," he answered, casting one quick glance over his shoulder at the massive, partially constructed building behind them. "The Joker gave the detonators to the opposite boat and told them that whichever ferry blew up the other first, he'd let that one live," he paused for just a moment while Matt and Jay both groaned. Leila felt her stomach clench and goosebumps crawl up along her exposed forearms. "But he said that if neither of the boats blew up, he'd blow them _both _upat midnight." the captain concluded, bringing up his wrist to glance at the time, while Leila, Matt and Jay all did the same; _11:48. _Matt swore next to Leila's left shoulder, dragging a hand down the top of his head. "The other medic teams are taking the hostages from Gotham General over to GMH now, so we need you guys to be on standby here. Gordon has the radios all silenced so I'll have an officer over to keep you guys informed as soon as I know something."

As the captain trotted away, shouting orders to a few nearby policemen, Jay turned to both Leila and Matt, shaking his head as his eyes glanced over toward the water. "Doesn't seem right, does it..." he commented. "Normal people having to decide whether or not to kill a bunch of criminals."

Leila nodded her agreement, glancing sideways as Matt took a half-step back to sit on the metal step of the ambulance. "And you can just imagine those poor guards on the boat with the prisoners," she added to Jay's observation, suppressing a shiver with difficulty. "I'd be surprised if there wasn't a full blown riot on that ferry."

Minutes ticked by slowly, the ambient sound of sirens dying down occasionally, then picking back up when another emergency vehicle would arrive and as Leila watched the ferries, she could not help but wonder what was taking the Batman so long. The whole city of Gotham viewed him as some dark, mysterious hero of sorts, capable of rescuing them from the clutches of crime, and yet he seemed to be having so much trouble with just one man...but then again, Leila remembered, this was no ordinary man the city was dealing with. Yes, they had encountered serial killers or snipers or mob hits, but they had never seen chaos on this scale of grandeur before. A day or two earlier, Leila had overhead someone in a Starbucks equating the Joker to a terrorist, and at the time, she had rolled her eyes, thinking this had been a bit of a stretch. But now, as she stared out over the water to the ferries where a least two hundred people sat helpless, trapped together and facing their impending doom, she felt ready to agree with that idea. The Joker was indeed a terrorist, and as she turned her gaze upward toward the building, she found herself sending a silent word of encouragement to the Batman, if he really was up there attempting to subdue that madman.

Just as Leila's eyes adjusted to the new distance between herself and the uppermost levels of the building, she squinted, frowning when she noticed something apparently falling through the air, though she was too far to tell what it was just yet. However as shouting and screams broke out around her, Leila gasped, bringing both of her hands up to her mouth as Matt and Jay both turned their heads, looking up to where her eyes were focused, watching the small figure of a human body falling rapidly toward the ground.

"Oh my god..." she vaguely heard Matt mutter next to her as he stood up from his place on the step of the ambulance. Her wide eyes squinted hard again, straining to see what had happened. From the distance, it appeared that the body had stopped falling about halfway down the building. It now looked to be suspended there, having seemingly hit an invisible block. On her right, Jay took a single step in the direction of the building, as though just one foot closer would help him see better. "What's going on?" Matt asked of no one in particular, glancing quickly to Leila and Jay.

All around them, the shouting had given way to voices at normal levels, all seemingly asking the same questions, of who had been thrown from the building, and now, how that one person had seemingly been rescued. At first, Leila had to wonder if perhaps the Joker had somehow managed to push the Batman off, but almost as soon as this thought passed through her mind, she realized that this idea meant the Joker would also have had to rescue him...which seemed highly unlikely. Just as she was about to open her mouth to ask Jay what he thought had happened, the same SWAT captain from earlier went tearing past them, shouting something into a radio as he sprinted toward the base of the building. Leila folded her arms across her stomach, using her hands to try and discreetly rid her forearms of the chills that had once again coated them as she watched yet another SWAT team assemble at the base of the Prewitt building.

"I really hope they tell us what's going on soon," she mumbled, wishing privately that the weather had been colder, giving her an excuse for the sudden shiver that ran up and down her spine. "It's almost worse to just stand here and wait-" she continued on, but paused, turning her head quickly when Matt suddenly let out a cry upon glancing at his watch.

"Hey! It's after midnight and the boats are still out there!" he exclaimed, pointing unnecessarily with one arm out toward the water, where indeed, the ferries still floated somewhat serenely in the bay, unharmed. Leila let out a sigh as she released the hold on her arms.

"Oh, god, I hope they got him," she groaned, shaking her head as she again turned her attention to the base of the building, where that newly assembled SWAT team had disappeared. On her other side, Jay let out a low hissing noise as his weight shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.

"Yeah, I wouldn't hold your breath, kid," he told her darkly. "Knowing him, he's got some other crazy-ass scheme up his sleeve. I got a feeling this ain't over yet." With a tsk-ing noise, Leila used the back of her hand to swat him on the arm, causing him to jump, while Matt groaned with a roll of his eyes. "Hey! I'm just sayin'," Jay went on, holding up two hands innocently. "We all thought he was done when they caught him a few days ago. Now look what happened!"

Since neither Matt nor Leila could argue with this, they both remained silent, but it turned out, neither of them needed to say anything, as their conversation was ended when a different man wearing yet another GCPD vest came trotting up, breathing heavily and sweating profusely. He motioned over his shoulder with his thumb toward the Prewitt building, inhaling deeply to catch his breath before he spoke. Leila felt her stomach clench again.

"We got him," the man finally exhaled, causing Matt and Jay to turn toward each other and high five over the top of Leila's head while she smiled. The SWAT official shared their enthusiasm with a weak, but happy grin of his own. "Batman left him strung up there like a freakin' pinata so our boys are bringin' him down now." At this, Leila's smile disappeared. _'What?'_ she asked hastily, but the man ignored her and continued. "So Gordon told us we need to have him checked out and any injuries documented before we get him back to MCU and into the high security cell, just in case his defense attorney tries something along the lines of police brutality. So if you guys could pull up there to the back of the building, he'll be coming down any minute now."

And with that, the man trotted away, leaving Matt, Leila and Jay to all turn and stare at each other, their jaws hanging slack as the magnitude of what they had just been instructed to do set in. Leila watched as Matt shook his head, taking a step back from she and Jay, holding up his hands while a disgusted expression appeared on his face.

"If they think I'm going anywhere _near _that guy, they're just as crazy as he is," he immediately stated. "You guys are gonna have to do it."

At Leila's right shoulder, Jay rolled his eyes, pulling the keys to the ambulance from the pocket of his black cargo pants. "Oh, c'mon, man, it's not like you gotta give him a back massage. You just have to check for head trauma, listen to his lungs and all that jazz," he said, walking around to the front door of the truck, to climb in, while Leila hopped up into the back where Matt was already seated in the jump seat, his arms folded tight across his chest and a very sour look on his face, like that of a stubborn toddler. She laughed at his expression, tossing her hands as she sat down on the bench across from him.

"Seriously, Matt, how many crazy homeless guys have we had to examine?" she asked, glancing to her right through the open doors of the ambulance as Jay began to drive backwards slowly along the crowded two lane street, toward the base of the building. "Just think of it like that," she then added with a falsely nonchalant shrug. If she was being perfectly honest, Leila was not exactly thrilled to death over the idea of having to be less than three feet from the man who had terrorized Gotham over the past two weeks, but she did not dare convey this to Matt or Jay. For reasons unbeknownst to her, she felt it was absolutely crucial that she be able to keep up with the boys, handle just as much as they did. Across from her, Matt seemed to sense this small insecurity as he raised his eyebrows, nodding decisively as he leaned back in the seat.

"So you can handle this then? You can do the exam, and I'll do the documentation?" he asked in a mockingly bright tone of voice, clearly hoping to get a hasty '_no way!' _from Leila in response. However, when she simply shrugged, nodding her head, his sarcastic smile faded quickly from view.

"Sure, that's fine with me," she answered, turning slightly in her seat to pull out a pair of blue latex gloves, hoping beyond everything that her voice sounded more confident than she truly felt.

But yet what she had just said was perfectly true; their team had experienced victims of all kinds over her past year as a paramedic. They had met some seriously insane patients, people suffering from dangerous psychotic episodes and no one had yet been harmed. Leila just figured she should treat this particular patient like any other- with calm, determined professionalism. It should not matter that he had killed over a dozen civilians and city officials alike within the span of two weeks.

As the ambulance came to a halt, with its back tires a mere ten to fifteen feet from the bottommost, back doors to the unfinished Prewitt building, Leila could feel her heart rate increasing with what she wanted to pretend was excitement that Gotham's nightmare had come to an end. Any moment, those doors were going to open and the most dangerous criminal mastermind the city had ever seen would be escorted toward her, and into the back of the truck, where she would be forced to be near him, within arm's reach, within strangling distance. Her racing heart had nothing to do with excitement after all and she was a fool to pretend otherwise. She looked over when Matt appeared at her side.

"We should get out..." he murmured, his eyes trained on the doors across from them, as though he expected the Joker to come bursting through them like a rabid dog out of a cage. "You know, just so he can get in before us or whatever," he then added, making it perfectly plain that he had absolutely no intention whatsoever on allowing himself to be cornered in the back of the ambulance with the Joker between himself and a route of escape. Leila had to admit that this sounded like something of a good idea, so she followed him out onto the pavement, where she turned and stood with her back to the open truck, her eyes fixed, unmoving on the doors across from her. Any second now...

His face was the first thing she saw; a dirty, yet glistening white skull looming through the dark shadows of the powerless Prewitt building doors, two fathomless black holes where his eyes should have been. As the SWAT team around him pushed open the doors to lead him through and out into the night air, the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles around them illuminated the red paint across his lips, which had been smeared upward, accentuating the now visible deep scars on either side of his mouth. Leila fought back a shiver; he was every bit as visually disturbing as the news and police had made him out to be.

Moments ago, she had been wondering curiously to herself whether the Joker would be fighting his captors, straining against them with every ounce of strength he contained, struggling to get away, but to her surprise, he was not. In fact, there was almost a sense of calmness about him, something somewhat _happy _about the way he was smirking contentedly to himself as he walked benignly between the two large officers on either side of him. He had already been shed of the long purple coat she had heard about, and which she noticed was being carried carefully by another member of the SWAT team, held out before him with one gloved hand as though it was something recently dead.

As he neared her, waves of some foreign energy seemed to radiate from him, pulsing the air around him so strongly, Leila could practically feel her eardrums throbbing from it. It was a sensation unlike anything she had ever experienced. It made her skin crawl, her mouth dry and her legs shaky; fleetingly, she wondered if anyone else around her could feel it as well or if she was particularly susceptible to the evil emanating from this man. Swallowing hard on the newly formed lump in her dry throat, she tore her eyes away from the Joker, to the SWAT team member on his left, who was speaking to him.

"Gordon wants you checked out before you go downtown," the man grunted, nodding his head toward the ambulance in front of them, where Leila and Matt were both standing. She held her breath as the Joker tossed his head slightly, attempting to fling some of his stringy green hair away from his face without the use of his hands, which she noticed had been cuffed tightly in front of him. A malicious grin spread across his mutilated face as his black eyes swiveled from Matt to Leila and back again.

"_Ahh..._" he growled, using that same clowny voice that Leila had heard so many times on the news over the past week. "Gotta make sure I'm all in one piece before I get a fresh _uh..._tune up down at the big house, hm?" the Joker asked the officer on his left, bouncing his eyebrows twice as the man used a tight grip on his upper arm to push him toward the ambulance.

"Something like that..." the officer replied.

As the Joker and his entourage of guards grew nearer, Leila glanced over at Matt, only to find that his face had cleared of any color and the expression there was almost like that of one who had just watched someone being sick. Her eyes did not spend much time there as her senses were suddenly inundated with a wave of mingled scents, brought to her nose on the wind when the Joker was made to stop within a few feet of her. The smell of gasoline was particularly strong though a hint of body odor lingered just beneath it, as though the man had not bathed in several weeks. She ignored this forcefully as the officer in front of her leaned to the side to lower his voice.

"Gordon wants every wound documented," he said somewhat quietly. Leila noticed his black glove tighten its grip on the Joker's arm as he glanced over hastily. "Just try to be quick. He wants him downtown ASAP."

She nodded, wondering fleetingly if this last bit was true, or if the man was just simply trying to get away from the Joker as soon as possible, though she thought that if the latter was really the case, she could not blame him at all. Just then, she felt her heart give a jab of surprise when the Joker suddenly leaned closer to the guard, his eyes glistening madly.

"Secrets, secrets are no _fun..."_ he sang slowly, letting out a quiet, breathless laugh as his gaze slid quickly to Leila, who immediately felt her tan, freckled skin flush along her cheeks. With a jerk, the officer gave the Joker a rough shake, gritting his teeth irritably.

"Get in there, you son of a bitch. I've about had it with you," the man barked, lifting upward on the Joker's arm until he could climb in with him and Leila watched them go, glancing quickly over at Matt, who did the same to her. Though just as she moved to follow the two men into the truck, he reached out to her, using his hand at her shoulder to turn her so both of their backs were to the ambulance. He then spoke, barely moving his lips with his voice little more than a whisper.

"Don't say a word to him," he murmured. "Just ignore him, okay?"

To this, Leila was not really sure what to reply, so she remained quiet, swallowing hard once again as she finally turned and pulled herself up into the ambulance.

The air within was as thick as a blanket, still and heavy with the presence of the terrorist, as though all the souls of the people he had killed were sitting right there, crowding the space, watching. Leila glanced at the Joker's dirty hands as as she passed him, imagining how he had so carelessly washed blood from them, wrapped them around the barrel of a gun or another human's throat, laughing as he drained life from them. He was a true horror to behold, his evil simply oozing from him like the sweat beaded along his white forehead. Leila felt it rather difficult to breathe as she took a seat across from the stretcher, what with the stench of gasoline, smoke and some scent slightly reminiscent of death. Whether this was just her imagination or not, she could not be entirely sure.

Indifferent to the devilish aura around him, the Joker had clearly mistaken the long stretcher as a comfortable lounge chair and had settled himself onto it, to lay on his back with a dramatic sigh of relaxation, his cuffed hands folded lightly across his dirty green vest. The once black makeup around his eyes now appeared a coal gray under the bright lights in the truck and was creased across his eyelids as he closed them. He wiggled his shoulders slightly to get into a more suitable position. Leila let her eyes pass over him briefly, from the tips of his stringy, greasy green hair strewn out under his head, down to his scuffed and tattered brown shoes, hanging easily from the foot of the stretcher. Despite her strong inclination not to, she opened her mouth, hoping and praying her voice would not betray her lack of confidence.

"Sit up, please," she said, in a more direct, waspish tone than she had originally meant to, and this was evidenced by how quickly the Joker opened one eye to peer over at her, his black eyeball rolling slightly in her direction. Leila held her breath, unable to force away the imaginative vision her brain conjured of him throwing himself toward her to wrap his large hands around her throat. Though to her surprise, he immediately sat up, swinging his long legs down from the stretcher to turn and face her with his cuffed hands in his lap. His new position putting him so close to her, the dusty knees of his purple, pin striped pants brushed against her own. She glanced down quickly, eying the new smudges of dirt along the black material, transfer from all the places she could only imagine he had been over the past week. Forcing herself not to flinch, she noticed out of the corner of her eye as the guard standing at the back of the stretcher moved closer, the hand bearing his gun twitching ever so slightly. The Joker seemed to ignore this as he licked his lips and leaned forward, his black eyes boring holes into her brown ones.

"Yes, _ma'am..._" he growled, that horrible, evil grin once again sliding across his painted face, forcing goosebumps to crawl across her arms and up her shoulders once again. In an effort to prevent him from seeing the raised bumps along her skin, she reached quickly to the side, pulling a small penlight from the pocket of her cargo pants, clicking the end to turn it on. Again, she opened her mouth, but found that her chills had become so severe, she was momentarily quite incapable of speaking. She cleared her throat, before attempting again, her forehead furrowing slightly as she spent an unnecessary amount of time adjusting the cap of the pen. Though as she finally lifted her head to look at him, her eyes immediately dropped to his lips as though drawn there by magnetic force, her curiosity once again getting the better of her. She found instantly that looking at him was equivalent to the phenomena humans experience when witnessing a car wreck, or an animal being slaughtered; it was terrible to see, hard to watch, but it was also impossible to look away, no matter how badly one wanted to.

His scars were even more horrible in person, violent and jagged as they tore their way down his cheeks to either side of his mouth, glistening with what appeared to be traces of fresh blood that had dripped down from the cuts in his face. Even with the red paint covering them, the bumps and grooves in his skin were so deep that it was almost impossible for Leila to resist the urge to run her own tongue along the inside of her cheek, just imagining what it felt like to have such a deformity. A moment later, a quiet, clowny voice nearly caused her to jump, finally breaking the dense silence still hanging over the ambulance.

"Beautiful aren't they..." he crooned, tilting his head to the side slightly and using his tongue to poke at one of the scars along the inside of his cheek, as if to show her that he had caught her staring. Leila forced her eyes up from his mouth, blinking slowly as though she had been thrown into a trance, all while the Joker grinned at her, his gaze admiring her own, full lips. "I bet you wanna know how I got 'em..." he then added, his voice dropping dramatically by an entire octave, causing the goosebumps along her arms to become almost painful in their severity. However, just when Leila was about to respond that _yes, _she actually _did _want to know how he had gotten them, she gave a small start when the guard standing behind Joker suddenly jabbed him in the middle of his back with the barrel of his gun.

"Shut up," he snapped at Joker, before nodding his head at Leila. "Hurry up and get this over with."

Struggling against her desire to take a deep, steadying breath, to avoid inhaling a whole lungful of the Joker's potent scent, she sat up straight, tossing her hair over her shoulder. His eyes narrowed quickly on the movement of her ponytail, like a wolf that had just seen a rabbit, his gaze now glazed over, watchful and alert, almost animalistic as she moved her hand to hold the penlight properly. She forcefully ignored the almost painful, foreboding flutter in the pit of her stomach and instead instructed, "Look straight ahead at the light."

Though just as she expected the Joker's eyes to move past her face to the window behind her, in the direction of the light, they did not and instead remained fixed on hers, his pupils already wider than was normal. His gaze was searching, almost invasive as though he was attempting to read her mind, but Leila ignored this easily, wanting nothing more than to get this examination finished; just being in the same location as this man was filling her with an intense, very primal desire to run. Focusing her attention on just his right eye, she moved the penlight back and forth across his line of vision, watching as his pupil widened and retracted, the black circle dilating large enough to swallow her whole if she stared any harder.

Blinking quickly, she pulled the light away abruptly, glancing to Matt, who until then, she had almost forgotten was even sitting there; her nerves calmed slightly upon remembering that she was not alone.

"Pupils reacting normally," she informed him, watching for just a moment longer as he scribbled a note on the paper, before she reached for the stethoscope around the back of her neck, the movement of it pulling her ponytail back over the front of her shoulder. For just a split second, she wondered if there was any other way for her to listen to his lungs without having to touch him, but without hesitation, she pushed past this moment of cowardice, bringing the earpieces toward her face, where she rested them against her jaw in preparation to place them in her ears. He was just another patient and should be treated as such. Raising her eyebrows, she addressed the Joker once again.

"Are you having any sort of chest pain?" she asked casually, this time giving him clear indication that she was not afraid of him, that his form of intimidation would not work on her while she was in _her _house, in the ambulance she loved. Across from her, the Joker's eyes rolled upward slightly as he took a deep breath in through his mouth, before exhaling slowly through his nose. He licked his lips a moment later, bringing both of his cuffed hands up to his chest, where he pressed two fingers against his disgusting vest, his black eyes twinkling malevolently.

"Right...here..." he murmured, indicating what Leila could only assume was his left lung. His red lips parted into a sinister grin when he must have noticed her withholding a sigh of disappointment that he might actually be injured, thus giving her cause for having to touch him. Despite that sense of foreboding growing stronger with each second, Leila shifted forward on the bench, desperately trying to avoid touching his knees with her own as she placed both ear pieces of the stethoscope into her ears.

The air was growing heavy and dense again as she reached out her right hand bravely toward him, hesitating only slightly once her fingers brushed the material of his green vest, moving it slightly to reach behind it and press the pad of the stethoscope to his chest. Her gloved fingers could feel the warmth of his skin through his shirt. That throbbing in her eardrums intensified, the Joker's now audible heartbeat accompanying it, following the rhythm perfectly in time, slow and steady, a deep, strong thump in his chest. She listened for several long seconds, studying it, mildly surprised to find that he was not entirely hollow inside and as she moved the stethoscope again, to the area he had indicated previously, her fingers tightened their grip on the instrument.

The Joker was very slowly moving in toward her, the upper half of his body leaning closer, tilting his head very slightly as it passed on the left side of her face, in a position that nearly appeared as though he were trying to hear his own heart beating through her head, or whisper something in her ear. Leila felt her entire body stiffen in preparation, and everything inside of her screamed for either Matt or the unnamed guard to stop him, say something, anything to distract him. Despite herself, she spoke quietly, slowly, in an effort keep her voice calm enough to prevent him from striking out.

"Take a deep breath," she instructed, and listened, closing her eyes against herself as the Joker inhaled deeply against her shoulder, where she could feel his nose pressed lightly against her ponytail, taking as much of her scent into his lungs as he could. With a jerk, she sat back quickly flinging her ponytail over her shoulder, yanking her hand away from his chest as though his clothing had burned holes into the tips of her latex glove. A heavy, disgusted scowl registered on her face as the Joker let out a quiet giggle and just next to her, Matt suddenly opened his mouth, his face contorted into an equally strong look of loathing.

"C'mon, Leila..." he murmured, still keeping his eyes focused on the Joker. "Let's get this over with."

"Chest sounds are fine," she skated over the moment hastily as she looked to Matt with wide eyes at his seemingly accidental use of her first name. He instantly seemed to realize what he had done as he quickly looked down at his clipboard, leaving Leila to replace the stethoscope around the back of her neck, before finally turning her attention to the cuts that had started to bleed along his face. They marred his skin in several different places, all traveling horizontally as though he had been whipped with something sharp. A few of the lacerations were shallow, while others deep and bleeding steadily, the bright red liquid dripping along the blotchy white makeup coating his skin. The drops from one of the particularly deep cuts had already dripped along his jaw, slid down his neck and onto the dirty collar of his blue, hexagonal patterned shirt, leaving dark red stains near his neck. Leaning to the side slightly, Leila avoided his once again penetrating gaze to count the injuries.

"Five...six lacerations on his fac-"

_"Leilaaaaa..."_ sang the clowny voice. She felt her insides seize up. "That's a _pretty _name."

Leila swallowed hard, ignoring him forcefully as she leaned to the side, reaching down into the bag of supplies for a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a roll of gauze. On her left, she could practically hear Matt glaring hatefully at the side of the Joker's face, despite the fact that it was _his _fault the most dangerous man in the city now knew her name. She made a quick mental note of this to bitch at him later. For the mean time, she remained focused on her patient and squeezed the bottle of hydrogen peroxide so a very thin stream of the clear, liquid disinfectant sprayed onto the wad of gauze she held between her gloved fingers. She then weighed her options within a split second. One of two possibilities were now figuratively staring her in the face as she looked over at the Joker, where he sat across from her, blinking serenely with a very perceptive smirk as though he could see the cogs working behind her eyes. The greasepaint makeup across his forehead was already fading from one corner, the white running into the black, the black down into the red, lined and streaked from the wrinkles of his face, some of the blood from his cuts already dried and caked into the paint. There was absolutely no way for her to clean the lacerations without having to touch him, and more importantly, it would be impossible to apply the narrow sterile strips to the cuts to close them without removing at least half of his makeup. But what if he did not want it removed? Should she ask him if it was alright?

A moment later, Leila's instincts made the decision for her and she reached out toward him, once again reminding herself that this was just another ordinary patient and under normal circumstances, she would never hesitate to do her job to full completion, nor allow a patient to make decisions for her. She had already decided that this man should be treated the same way every other victim had been treated in the past. However just as the cold, damp wad of gauze touched the upper corner of his face, Leila let out an audible gasp of shock when several things happened all at once.

The sound of metal clanking broke the tense silence in the ambulance like a gun shot as the Joker suddenly reached up with both cuffed hands, wrapping all five of his right fingers around her wrist in a surprisingly tight, vice-like grip, his dingy, broken fingernails digging into the soft flesh there. The guard behind him lurched forward at the same time that Matt leaned over, but Leila's moment of temporary paralysis had passed and she held up her other free hand slowly to show the two men that he was not hurting her...yet. She stared defiantly back at him as the Joker once again seemed impervious to the other movement around him, his black, glossy eyes glaring deeply into hers.

"Awfully _rude _to touch without permission, don't you think, Leila?" he asked, his voice light and bouncy as though he were simply asking her opinion on the weather and she swallowed, her throbbing brain just barely able to register his use of her first name for the second time. The Joker's gaze drifted slowly downward from her eyes, to her lips, where they lingered for just a second longer, before he continued down her chest, to the silver name badge pinned to her uniform shirt. His eyes then shifted quickly to her hand, clutched in his tight grip. A terrible smirk once again slid onto his painted face as he turned his own wrist slowly, rotating her hand so that her gloved fingers were facing him.

"Or should I call you _Miss _Hawkin_..."_ he then added, dragging his eyes back to her own, having clearly noticed the lack of a spiky bulge beneath the blue latex over her left ring finger. Choking down the swell of panic that threatened to overtake her, Leila blinked slowly.

"Please let go of me," she said quietly, calmly, once again calling upon every ounce of courage she contained. Across from her, there was a shift in the Joker's expression, a subtle one, but a change in the flow of events none the less. He blinked quickly, his head cocking to the side as his grin expanded. However just as he opened his mouth to speak, Leila flinched when the Joker's shoulders lurched forward slightly, but not of his own doing; the guard behind him had shoved his gun roughly into the space between the Joker's broad shoulders.

"She told you to let go," the man snapped and Leila watched as the Joker's eyes narrowed, sliding away from her face, toward the side where the guard was standing just over his shoulder. She noticed a muscle lining his jaw give a twitch beneath the white paint as he undoubtedly gritted his teeth together in the back of his mouth. Then as quickly as it had happened, the grip on her wrist was released and the Joker's cuffed hands dropped back down into his lap. He then slid his black-ringed eyes closed, tilting his face upward resignedly so she could continue where she left off, at the top corner of his forehead.

The greasepaint was surprisingly easy to remove with the use of the peroxide, but before long, Leila had gone through several wads of gauze, having used every possible corner of the soft material to remove the makeup until the entire square would be gray. The flesh-toned skin beneath began to reveal itself as she neared his right eyebrow, unveiling freckles and wrinkles along with it, which left Leila feeling mildly surprised. What had she been expecting to find beneath the makeup? Despite what she felt to the contrary, everything she had seen thus far indicated that this patient was indeed a normal man, from the dirty blonde roots showing through his greasy green hair, to his heartbeat and the dark red blood now beginning to ooze steadily through the cut she had just reached along his eyebrow. It just did not seem possible for any true human to commit the crimes that he had.

The new, clean pad of gauze passed over his arched eyebrow, taking the first of the black paint along with it, and she continued down, using her pointer finger to very gently pass over his eyelid, once more revealing normal flesh beneath it and the eyelashes that lined the edge. His nose was next, though Leila kept her attention focused to the right of it, where the majority of the deeper cuts had been made. The makeup there had been creased and furrowed from what she assumed was his laughter, the kind that had likely made his belly ache and the bridge of his nose wrinkle. She continued on again, fully aware that her path of cleaning was drawing horribly close to passing over the jagged groove of his curvy, more symmetrical scar, where it traveled upward from the corner of his lips. For a moment, she considered stopping just above it, but if she were being perfectly honest with herself, her curiosity was at an all time high.

The Joker was being surprisingly docile for the time being, so as she approached the scar along his cheek, she pushed on, struggling with great effort not to shiver as the tips of her fingers passed over the upper corner of it, feeling the even, smooth skin transition suddenly into bumps and depressions. A sudden twitch from the Joker caused Leila to glance down at his hands in his laps, where to her surprise, she could see tiny goosebumps rising steadily along his exposed forearms. The urge to grin was almost unbearable as Leila wondered whether he was maybe enjoying her ministrations a bit more than he cared to admit.

With the right half of his face clean and the gauze in her hand filthy, she tossed it aside, before preparing to wet a new piece, though just as she reached back toward his face, with a fresh, peroxide soaked pad, she hesitated, her fingers faltering; his clean right eye had opened and was watching her with an expression that very closely mimicked curiosity. Finally pausing to take in the entirely flesh-toned, right half of his face, she felt her stomach turn over inside of her; the Joker's eyes were brown. She cleared her throat, tearing her focus away from this to lean forward and very gently press the wad of gauze to the cut just next to his eyebrow.

"I'm going to put a few 'steri-strips' on this cut to keep it closed," she explained, both to the Joker and Matt, who she could hear scribbling away on the clipboard next to her. "They're not meant to get wet so try to avoid doing so, at least for the first day or t-"

"You're not afraid of me, are you, Miss Hawkin?" the Joker suddenly interrupted, once again displaying a knack for overturning Leila's momentary streak of boldness. She stalled for just a moment, her eyes shifting to meet his from where they had been focused on the gauze next to his eyebrow. She blinked, once, before bringing her hand away and turning her head to toss the bloody pad into the bin.

"No," she lied defiantly, reaching out again once she had applied adhesive to the tiny strips of sterile material. Carefully, she stuck the opposite ends to the skin on either side of his cut and pulled gently in either direction, forcing the wound closed. The Joker blinked, his bare eyelashes brushing lightly against the material of her glove.

As Leila began to pull her hand away, his shoulders suddenly lunged toward her, his hands shifting quickly to rattle the chain of his handcuffs, and a rough, loud growl escaped his throat. This forced her to give a sharp jump and practically fling herself up into the window behind her as a completely instinctive, unpreventable squeak of fear and shock immediately flew past her lips when she recoiled. Then suddenly the ambulance was full of manic, evil laughter as the Joker bounced giddily a few times where he sat.

"_Liar," _he growled, once again leaning toward her, though this time, the guard came to her aid, rushing forward to snatch the Joker's arm in his black glove. Then with a quick yank, he pulled the Joker to his feet, so quickly that the top of his green head nearly collided with the ceiling of the ambulance.

"That's it, we're done," the man said loudly over the peals of laughter still emanating from the terrorist. "We'll get that documentation from you tomorrow. Gordon wants him now."

And with that, the Joker was practically thrown from the back of the ambulance, where the rest of his guards appeared at once, grabbing hold of his arms and walking him determinedly toward a waiting, armored police vehicle. Unable to help herself, Leila stood from her place on the bench to watch them go, her hands still shaking. Almost in slow motion, she watched as the Joker turned his head, casting one last look, filling her with undeniable fear and dread. Unless she was very much mistaken, this would not be her last encounter with the terrorist.

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A/N: Welcome to the new story! I'm SO excited about this endeavor and I really can't wait to share it with you guys! There is an incredible playlist for this story, along with pictures of the characters and lots of fun stuff on my fanfiction Facebook page. Just head over and add me by searching for 'Haven QueenofMean Hunter'. From there, you can add me as a homie, or invite yourself to my Joker-centric group called 'The Man with the Glasgow Smile' for tons of pictures and fun posts about our favorite villain.

For those of you who have read my three part series featuring the Joker and my first OC, Jayde, please be aware that this story will be entirely different. As you may have been able to tell, I'm sticking a little more closely to the portrayal of the Joker by Heath in the Dark Knight, while still giving him little twists and turns along the way. So I thank you VERY much for reading and I hope you'll stick with me as we start this new story...

I'd also like to thank both ClownQween'69 and Auriellis for reading and re-reading this chapter for me, just to make sure it was absolutely perfect for you guys. = ]

And as I always say...

LEAVE ME YOUR LOVE/HATE IF YOU WANT ANOTHER CHAPTER! -QoM


	2. Just Getting By

"_Oops?_" Leila repeated Matt's words incredulously, turning to face him with her eyebrows raised as he hopped down from the ambulance behind her. Her hands met her waist as he shrugged. "I think letting my first name slip in front of one of the most dangerous men in the country is a little bit more than an '_oops', _Matt." she added, arching one dark eyebrow sharply when he placed a carefully apologetic expression on his clean-shaven face.

"I know, I know, jeez," he said quickly, holding up both hands as Jay appeared around the side of the truck, pulling the radio and keys from his pocket. "It was an amateur mistake, _sorry." _

Their shift had graciously just ended, the gradually darkening sky causing the lights under the docking bay to appear brighter than usual. Their oldest team member let out a laugh as he helped them pull the stretcher down to begin wiping it off with disinfectant in preparation for the next day.

"Seriously, Matt," Jay joined in Leila's teasing, giving her a very quick wink of his left eye and an understanding grin as he glanced over at her from across the stretcher. "We should start calling _you _the rookie."

At this, Matt stood up straight, a bottle of liquid green soap in one gloved hand, a wad of paper towels in the other. "Says the guy who sat in the cab the whole time!" he exclaimed in indignation, tossing the soggy ball of paper at Jay, who ducked away from it, laughing. "You didn't have to smell that guy!"

"That's true, Jay," Leila agreed, accepting the roll of paper towels from Matt and giving a laugh of her own when he let out an audible shudder of disgust. "I had to wash my uniform when I got home last night because I kept smelling him on me." she added, leaning down to wipe the legs of the stretcher. Above her, Jay tutted noisily.

"Oh trust me, I could smell him just fine from where I was," he started, shaking his bald head. "...like an old gym bag."

"-that someone forgot and left in their trunk," Matt supplied.

"-in the middle of summer," Jay then concluded, and both burst into loud laughter while Leila finally stood back up, a slight scowl on her face as she tossed her now dirty wad of paper towels into the trashcan Matt had rolled over.

"Yeah, it's real funny to _you _guys," she raised her voice over their laughter, frowning at both of them as they turned to look at her. "You didn't have to _touch _him and he doesn't know _your _names, does he?" Her question ended with a sharp shiver of discomfort that she did not even bother attempting to hide; the way his spine-chilling voice crooned her name had yet to erase itself from the banks of her memory. Another short laugh left Jay as he and Matt lifted the newly clean stretcher back into the ambulance, and he paused to close the heavy doors before he turned to face her.

"Well, just look at it this way," he began bracingly, walking over to her to place one hand on her shoulder; a mischievous grin cracked his aging face. "At least now he knows who to address his thank-you note to!" More raucous laughter broke out between the guys, leaving Leila to roll her eyes and walk away, pulling her stethoscope from around the back of her neck as she disappeared into the station house.

Cool, wonderful air conditioning met her face, chilling her hairline where sweat had begun to form and with a sigh, she brought both of her hands up, running them back along the smoothed sides of her hair. Inwardly, she groaned as she repeated the action a second time, more slowly, allowing one hand to pass over the top of her head to her ponytail. Nearly an inch of her naturally kinky, coarse hair had grown in at the roots, frizzing slightly along her hairline. A heavy sigh escaped through her nose as she twirled the dial on her locker; she would be needing a relaxer and _soon. _Yet then again, getting one's hair done required money. Leila's heart sank a little.

The latch to the locker gave a metallic groan as it always did, while the door through which she had just come opened again, revealing Matt, still grinning, with Jay, doing the same, behind him. She ignored them for the time being, still studying the gnarled roots of her dark hair in the small mirror magnetically stuck to the inside of the locker door, when Matt appeared next to her and began to twirl the combination to his own lock.

"So are either of you going to that memorial banquet on Friday?" he asked rather offhandedly, glancing to either side of him where Leila stood applying heavy shea butter lotion to her hands, and Jay pulled a small gym bag onto his shoulder.

He was the first to reply by shaking his head with a grin and a shrug. "Nope," he answered, reaching out to push the door to his locker closed. "Kyle's got a big soccer game that night and Molly said she'd kill me if I missed one again." To this, Matt gave a groan and a roll of his eyes.

"Oh, c'mon, man, how many of those have you been to?" he asked rhetorically, both he and Leila knowing that Jay tried to never miss one of his thirteen-year old son's games. "I bet Molly would be fine with you missing it." Matt added, glancing over at Leila when she let out a quiet, skeptical snort; as a twenty-eight year old bachelor, Matt was a little oblivious to the way a wife operated.

Jay's eyes widened as he shook his head. "Yeah right, you don't know my wife," he said warningly, rolling his shoulder to readjust the bag's straps. "She's a monster. I miss that game, and I'll come up missing, trust me." Suddenly, he paused, glancing down at his watch. "Speaking of, I gotta go. I'll see you guys on Tuesday."

With the door to the hallway closing behind Jay with a snap, Leila reached into the locker for her messenger bag, which she looped over her shoulder while Matt sprayed his neck twice with the obnoxious cologne he wore outside of work.

"What about you?" he then posed his previous question to her, closing his locker as she did the same. Leila shrugged, turning to walk with him toward the exit, her hand sliding into the pocket of her bag for the keys to her car. The door opened outward into the humid night air, contrasting strongly with the cool interior of the station house.

"Probably not," she answered, glancing up when Matt immediately groaned in disappointment. She went on to explain, stopping next to the trunk of her Camry, while he did the same at his jeep next to it. "I was really hoping to just stay home Friday night. I haven't had two consecutive days off in a long time and my place is a wreck."

"Come _on!_ Go with me, please?" Matt whined, opening the back of his car to haphazardly toss his bag inside, where it gave a clank against the random baseball bats, balls and garbage littering the carpet. "I really don't want to go by myself and not know anyone."

At this, Leila rolled her eyes, folding her arms across her middle to lean back against her dark green car, watching with a wrinkled nose as Matt walked around to the driver's side door, before reappearing with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He opened it and lit one, watching as Leila used a hand to fan his smoke away from her face.

"Oh, please, Matt, half of your friends are cops. I really doubt you won't know anyone there," she argued, arching one eyebrow as he tossed his hands exasperatedly, flicking ashes from the end of his cigarette in the process.

"Yeah, and half of _them _have patrol that night," His admittedly handsome young face contorted expertly into a pleading look of desperation. "_Please _go? It'll be fun!"

Finally, Leila laughed at his enthusiasm, but shook her head all the same, standing up from leaning sideways to open her car door and drop her bag on the seat. She dug around inside it for a moment, while talking to Matt just behind her. "If you're expecting some sort of party at that thing, I think you need to reevaluate your definition of the word 'memorial'," she answered, laughing again as she stood up, her phone in hand, and turned to find a very blank expression on his face. "It's basically going to be a mass funeral with dinner served."

At these words, Matt reanimated. "Exactly!" he exclaimed, reaching out to place both of his hands, cigarette included, on her shoulders and give her a shake. "Free food! Why else would I go?" he went on to ask, but Leila was already cocking her head to the side away from his cigarette as she looked up at him.

"Oh, is that cute, blonde M.E. calling herself 'free food' now?" she asked, her sarcastically confused look shifting instantly into a teasing grin when Matt let go of her shoulders and frowned, crossing his arms tightly across his chest.

"That's a low blow, Hawkin," he said, glancing left into the bushes lining the parking lot to flick his cigarette butt there. "You think the only reason I'd go to a memorial is to hit on a girl?" When Leila immediately nodded with an expression reading plainly of '_duh', _Matt rolled his eyes, ignoring her, to ask, "Okay, so you'll go?"

For just a moment, she hesitated, before she sighed heavily, her shoulders heaving. "_Fine," _she eventually answered, groaning when Matt suddenly rushed forward and swept her into one of his characteristic rib-cracking hugs that pinned her arms tightly to the sides of her body. When he finally released her, she held up one finger in his face. "But you meet me outside so I don't have to walk in alone, okay?"

Matt nodded excitedly, already moving away from her to round the back of his jeep. "Yeah, yeah, sure," he replied over his shoulder distractedly, pulling his phone from the pocket of his black pants. "See ya Tuesday!"

Upon stepping into her dark apartment twenty minutes later, Leila paused in the doorway to let out a heavy sigh when the mess of random, dirty clothing, empty water bottles and dusty furniture surfaces met her eyes, the clutter practically glowing in the dim light. This was precisely the reason she wanted to stay in that coming Friday night. After working an eight hour shift, the very last thing she wanted to do upon arriving home was _clean, _thus creating the mess that had accumulated over the past two weeks, the mess that was drawing her eyes like a dead body. With a quiet groan, she stepped further into the apartment, dropping her keys onto the equally untidy kitchen counter, before hastily undoing the buttons on her uniform shirt to slide out of it and drape it over the back of one of the high stools at the breakfast bar.

The mess was even more overwhelming once Leila had stepped further into the large living room, forcefully ignoring the dining table, which, by itself, held roughly seventy-five percent of the clutter, in the form of torn envelopes, scribbled on notepads, pencils and a calculator. The official letters had been read and re-read so many times, they now lay quite flat and smoothed in organized piles atop the surface of the mahogany table. With another sigh of longing, Leila stood staring at her couch and the TV remote laying so temptingly there before it, but with a determined huff, she turned her back on it, marching instead over to the white French doors to her bedroom.

The lamp atop her nightstand illuminated the room once she had flicked it on, revealing her large bed and the fat, gray cat curled into a tight ball on the middle of it. Leila smiled as her pet lifted his head, blinking sleepily at the new light in the room, and meowing quietly up at her as she approached. With a groan, she fell onto her bed heavily beside him, to roll onto her stomach and reach out one hand toward the cat.

"Hey, Murphy..." she murmured, smiling serenely as he purred and closed his yellow eyes, leaning into her touch when she scratched his gray cheek. "Have a good day?" she asked, her grin expanding when Murphy let out a quiet mew. Leila rolled her eyes, resting the side of her head on her arm. "Of course you did," she mumbled. "All you had to do was lay here and be fat all day." As if to rub this in her face, as though he had understood what she said, Murphy turned slowly onto his back, to stretch his four legs out and peer at his owner upside down. Leila snorted a laugh, reaching out to rub her hand roughly on his jiggly belly before she pushed herself up off the bed, to step out of her black uniform pants.

Once dressed in a big t-shirt and a pair of roomy sweatpants, Leila journeyed out into the kitchen, to begin cleaning up her dishes from breakfast, again purposely averting her eyes from the dining table. There was just something about the sight of the bountiful spread of unpaid bills that made her stomach hurt and her mood worsen; there would be plenty of time for her to feel queasy and bitchy tomorrow.

As she poked her head into the fridge after putting the dirty dishes into the washer and wiping down the counters, Leila hummed contemplatively as she eyed the carton of eggs sitting on the shelf. The thought of baking a fresh batch of cookies seemed wildly appealing, but as she weighed her options and her stomach gave a particularly loud grumble of impatience, she pushed the idea away in exchange for the leftover Chinese on the other side of the fridge. The cookies could wait until tomorrow.

There was truly no place on Earth Leila would rather be at that moment than sitting on her couch, picking through her box of fried rice and orange chicken with a pair of chop sticks. The long, sheen drapes had been pulled across the massive windows lining the wall of her apartment, shielding her from the view of the building across the street and with a sigh, she curled her socked toes, wondering what her first item of business would be for the next day. A visit to her parents' condo sounded appealing, especially when compared with the mountain of bills sitting across the room from her. So with her mind set on this, she finished eating and turned off the TV, before pausing in the kitchen to throw the empty box from dinner in the garbage.

The bed and cat were exactly where she had left them, and after brushing her teeth, Leila approached both, sliding out of her sweatpants to leave them lazily on the floor near the bathroom. Her jaw dropped in a wide, cheek-splitting yawn as she pulled back the blankets, earning her a low, annoyed meow when Murphy was forced to the other side of the bed, leaving a round, warm spot where Leila usually slept. With the lamp on the nightstand off and the second set of sheen drapes pulled across the windows in her bedroom wall, she sighed comfortably, turning onto her side facing them, allowing her eyes to wander aimlessly along the blurred lights from the building across the street. There was something so relaxing, almost consoling about them and Leila was struggling to comprehend why, when she found that her brain was feeling a bit too heavy and foggy for much thought. So she closed her eyes instead, allowing the first traces of sleep to overcome her.

…...

The following morning dawned a bright and clear blue, though just as oppressively muggy as the ones before it. As Leila climbed out of her car inside the parking garage on 5th avenue, she swore under her breath, instantly regretting her last minute decision to run a flat iron through the kinky roots of her her hair; they would be curly again in no time. The garage was mercifully somewhat cool in comparison to the sunbathed street beyond it, so instead of venturing out to walk to the condo building's front doors like she usually did, she turned right toward the elevators.

The lobby of her parents' condominium building was as sparkling clean and beautiful as it always was, the mahogany desks glinting under their freshly applied coat of polish. It seemed the wealthy inhabitants of this building had been feeling the heat from summer as well, seeing how the air conditioning had seemingly been set somewhere between 'freezing' and 'arctic'. Leila was far from complaining however and exhaled comfortably as she pushed some of her temporarily sleek brown hair away from her face, turning her head to send a friendly grin in the direction of the familiar older man standing at the desk. His black suit was pressed so crisply, Leila was mildly surprised he could move his arm to wave without giving off an ominous cracking sound.

"Miss. Leila!" he greeted her, the broad, toothy smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes. "Come to visit the folks?" Avoiding a sarcastic response, Leila nodded, stepping over to the desk to rest her forearms there.

"Hey, Tom," she answered, returning his grin. "Yeah, I'm off today so I thought I'd drop in and surprise them. Do you know if they're home?" she asked, hoping the doorman could answer this and prevent her from making a trip upstairs to stand waiting at the door to an empty apartment. Across the desk from her, he glanced upward to look at the ceiling instinctively, as though attempting to see through the floors to the inside of her parents' unit.

"I think I saw your dad leave earlier but I haven't been out here to see if he's come back yet," he explained with a shrug. "Never saw your mom though, so I'm betting she's home." Tom paused, his eyes scanning her face before his bushy, gray eyebrows raised from behind his glasses. "I can call up there if you like?" he asked, but Leila was already taking a step away from the desk, smiling kindly back at him as she shook her head.

"Oh, no thanks, Tom," she told him, giving a small wave of her hand. "I'll go on up there and find out for myself. I'll see you later, okay?"

After parting ways with the doorman, Leila found herself in yet another elevator, hastily double checking her appearance in the wall mirror, smoothing down the frizz that had already started to appear along her hair line. While she knew there was no logical reason for wanting her impress her own mother, she also knew the woman to have a notorious reputation for judging people based on how well groomed or otherwise they appeared. If Leila were to show up looking bedraggled and unkempt, she would harp on and on, asking what was wrong or if there was anything she could do to help and honestly, she did not feel she could handle that at the moment. That mountain of bills and paperwork waiting at home was still floating peskily in the back of her mind.

The small gold plate on the white door to her parents' condo bore the numbers '712', etched tastefully into the shiny metal, reflecting a distorted version of Leila's nose as she stood there waiting, after she had knocked. On the other side of the door, she could hear a very familiar voice squeal '_Coming!' _from within the depths of the house_, _sending a smile onto her face; it seemed the older she got, the cuter her mother became. Her voice was followed by the rhythmic, slapping sound of flip-flops on tile, growing louder until it stopped, and the door was thrown open, revealing a short white woman with a very excited expression on her aged, but admittedly beautiful face. Cindy Hawkin let out a soft squeal, bouncing slightly on the heels of her feet, her smile almost too immense for her face as she held out her arms toward her daughter, who laughed and stepped forward to bend down slightly and hug her.

"Leila! What are you doing here?" she asked, releasing her after a very tight embrace, and leaning back with her hands still gripping her daughter's upper arms. "Are you off today?"

"Yeah, I am," Leila answered, stepping further into the condo to allow her mother room to shut the door behind them. "So I thought I'd run over and see you and Daddy while I'm free!" she explained, unintentionally matching her mother's energy and excitement as she followed her into the kitchen, where the blonde woman leaned over the bottom freezer drawer, filling a glass with ice cubes. "Not a bad time is it?"

Across the kitchen, Cindy stood up abruptly and shut the freezer door, her penciled eyebrows raising behind her rectangular framed glasses. "A bad time?" she repeated confusedly, now reaching into the fridge for the jug of filtered water. "It's never a bad time for you to stop by, honey. I'm just glad to see you're alright!" With the glass full to overflowing with ice and wonderfully chilled water, Cindy walked back toward her daughter to hand it to her. Leila accepted the glass, frowning slightly as she turned to follow her mom out into the impeccably clean living room.

"I'm fine," she answered, plopping down onto the couch comfortably while her mother did the same across from her, flipping her feet childishly to kick off her sandals. "Why wouldn't I be?"

At these rather nonchalant words, Cindy leaned forward suddenly, her eyes wide, causing Leila's frown to deepen further. "Well, Dad and I were watching the news the other night and saw what was happening at the Prewitt building!" she exclaimed. Leila's heart sank; she had so hoped her mother would not have heard about that. "And we heard that all the ambulance teams had to go down there and...well, I just figured you, Matt and Jay were down there too, so I got worried!" she concluded, bringing both of her hands up to clasp together anxiously under her chin, as though she were watching the event unfold on television all over again. Leila could not help but laugh at this as she set her glass of water down on the glass table before her.

"Yeah, we were down there-" she began, but upon a quiet, dramatic gasp from the other end of the couch, she hesitated, figuring that the whole bit about her having to examine the Joker could be left unsaid, for fear that her mother might have a full blown heart attack. She shook her head dismissively after a moment, fidgeting idly with a stray fiber on her jeans. "-but nothing really happened to us," She then continued with an extravagant lie. "They caught him so that was good."

On the opposite end of the couch, Cindy exhaled heavily in relief, leaning back into the cushions. "I'm so relieved about that," she groaned, glancing back over when Leila nodded in agreement. "I still can't get over how lucky it was that your dad wasn't in his office the day that psychopath blew up the hospital." Leila sighed, closing her eyes momentarily as she thought back to the frantic call she had placed to her mother upon hearing the news that Gotham General had been destroyed.

"I know," she agreed, shaking her head, but then frowned once again. "Speaking of, where is he?"

"Oh, he's at Gotham Municipal," her mother explained airily, waving a hand. "Said he had a board meeting about how and when they needed to start rebuilding Gotham General. I think they're talking about throwing some sort of fundraiser gala."

Leila rolled her eyes heavily, reaching up one hand to absentmindedly scratch an itch along her hairline, but before she could comment on her mother's information, Cindy spoke up. Her blue eyes were trained on the puffy, curly roots of her daughter's hair.

"Honey, you're looking a little nappy," she commented honestly with a nod in her direction, quickly raising both hands defensively when Leila cried '_Mom!'. _"Well, you _are..._Have you been to see Regina lately?" With a groan, Leila let both of her hands flop down into her lap, dropping her head back onto the cushion behind her and momentarily reverting back to the stubborn, sixteen-year old, mixed race girl of years past.

"_No..."_ she grumbled. "Getting my hair done requires time _and _money, and I haven't had either one of those-"

Cindy let her tongue click against the inside of her teeth disapprovingly, shaking her head when Leila glanced over. "Well, that's no excuse," she scolded, rising from the couch abruptly, to disappear somewhere over her shoulder, where Leila could hear her rummaging around for something. Tossing her hands again, Leila stared up at the ceiling exasperatedly.

"How is that not an excuse?" she asked of seemingly thin air. "I can't afford it! It's not like I don't _want_ my hair done." Just then, her mother's hand appeared in the space before her nose, clutching a crisp one-hundred dollar bill with her carefully manicured fingernails. Leila groaned, sitting up and rolling her eyes as she pushed the hand and money away from her face. "No, Mom, you know I don't like taking money from you and Dad. I can just wait until my next check. It's fine," she argued, but Cindy was already rounding the end of the couch, swatting at her daughter's hands in her effort to stuff the money into her front jeans pocket.

A half hour later, after a very silly battle over the money, during which Leila attempted to leave three separate times without it, she was finally sliding back into her car, that fresh hundred dollar bill now tucked safely into her wallet. Upon leaving, her mother had told her to use part of the money for her hair and the rest of it for groceries, but Leila was not intending to do that at all. If she had to use her parents' money, it was going straight toward her bills and other absolutely necessary payments; she would much rather have her power remain on than sleek, freshly relaxed hair.

The scent of made-from-scratch, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies was filling Leila's apartment like air freshener. The drapes across the massive windows had been pulled back, revealing the opposite building once again, where the setting sun was casting a fiery, orange glare against the windows. Murphy had settled into his favorite place atop the back of the couch, his fat rolls so immense that his back legs were completely hidden from view. Leila watched him doze from her seat at the cluttered dining table for several long moments, smirking jealously to herself as she imagined switching lives with him, how _easy _it would be to just sleep and eat all day. Yet the time had come for her to settle in to work through her finances, and with a determined clearing of her throat, she pushed her plate of half-eaten cookies away from her resolutely, pulling her glasses down from the top of her head to the freckled bridge of her nose.

The first bill on the stack was from the power company. As she picked it up, her eyes fell instinctively to the bottom of the paper, where the words 'amount due' were followed very closely by the numbers '$175.83'. She sighed, setting the paper down in her crudely assembled 'paid' file; there went that one-hundred dollars from her mother. Reaching out, she used a red pen to scrawl a large check mark in the upper corner of the power bill. One down,far too many left to go.

By the time an hour had come and gone, Leila had been up and down from her chair, in and out of the kitchen, on and off the phone with the loan company, had only just written out her rent check, and was now seated back at the table, staring down at a painfully small number on the screen of the calculator. For several long moments, she blinked at the figure, unable to believe that this amount was supposed to last her through the next three weeks. She had even erased everything, added it all up again, just to be sure, but was still left with that same, heart breaking number. Reaching toward her face, she pulled her glasses from her nose, tossing them onto the table with a dull thud before her eyes closed behind the dark, coolness of her hands. Against every attempt to prevent it, Leila could feel hot tears threatening to gather along her lower lids and she sniffed hard against her palms, swallowing hard on the knot in her throat. From experience, she knew that crying over this would only make matters worse.

Leila jumped when a large, furry body landed with a surprisingly light thud on the table in front of her, giving a soft mew, his padded feet shifting the papers from their previously neat piles. A quiet, would-be teary laugh escaped her as she reached out to place both of her hands on either side of Murphy's face, where she stared deeply into his yellow eyes. She shook her head wearily as the cat gazed back at her.

"What am I going to do, buddy?" she asked him softly, her grin expanding when he wiggled his face from her grip to turn and arch his back beneath her touch, meowing noisily to be fed. Leila sighed, rising from the table to fill his bowl.

Perhaps, she could get a second job. Just something small, easy, to ensure her bills could be paid and still leave her with enough money to put gas in her car and food in her house. Working as a paramedic was rewarding and challenging, it was her dream job, but it was obviously not enough to keep her afloat and comfortable. Though working both as a medic and whatever other side job she could manage to find would be next to impossible, seeing how she was already working a full-time shift schedule at the fire house, which was plenty demanding in and of itself.

Leaned against the kitchen counter, Leila watched listlessly as Murphy devoured his food, wondering whether she might start looking for a new, cheaper place to live. Yes, this apartment had been something of a gift from her father, as he had paid the deposit and first month's rent, but upon reflection, she thought she might have been a bit too optimistic about her situation at the time. A year later, she had yet to have a month where she was able to relax and spend some money on herself, had not been shopping for clothes in who knew how long, and quite frankly, she was getting tired of it. But if she knew one thing, she would rather make the decision to downgrade for herself, rather than to have it made for her by the landlord when she was once again late on her rent. Sooner or later, something had to give.

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A/N: A rather short, uneventful chapter, folks, I know. But it was necessary! So have no fear because big things are happening... Thanks a bunch for reading and I hope you can't wait for the next one! = ] -QoM


	3. Out

The bag of equipment at Leila's side bounced rhythmically against her leg as she climbed the narrow, wooden stairs, following a nearly hysterical older woman. The brownstone house had a faint air of neglect but she ignored the scent of molding carpets with ease, too distracted by listening to the wife in front of her, wheezing and crying her way through an explanation.

"He was just getting out of the tub when he slipped and fell!" she cried, wringing her knobby hands as she stopped at the banister on the second level of the house and moved to the side, allowing Leila ahead of her. "Now that he's up, he's all confused and-"

Leila interrupted the woman, turning her head first left, then right, glancing either way down the evening sunlit hallway. "Ma'am, where is he?" she asked, turning back to the elderly woman, who gave a start as if suddenly remembering.

"Oh! He's in the armchair in the bedroom," she explained, pointing with a frail arm into the room directly across from where the two women stood. Without hesitation, Leila moved forward, reaching down to pull her penlight from the chest pocket of her uniform shirt. She clicked it on, moving into the bedroom the woman had indicated.

The old man in the chair lifted his head lethargically to see who had entered the room as the door widened with a creak, and immediately, Leila noticed, under the light from the sun shining in through a skylight over head that his face was oddly drooped on the left side. She felt a weight sink into her stomach; if her hunch was correct, time was of the essence. Kneeling in front of the man, she pulled the radio from its place clipped to her pocket, in preparation to call downstairs, where Matt and Jay were waiting with the stretcher, should it be needed. After glancing over the man's attire of blue striped pajamas to check for signs of external injury, she addressed him, raising her voice when she noticed a set of abandoned hearing aids on the small table next to him.

"Sir," she began, pausing to clear her throat. "Your wife told me you had an accident. Can you tell me what happened?" she asked, raising her eyebrows and reaching out to place two fingers against the pulse point along the inside of his wrist. The man nodded slowly, his eyes lowered to where she was touching him, seemingly bemused by her actions; another bad sign.

"I fell..." came the man's croaky voice. Leila took her hand away from his arm, instead moving her penlight toward his face to check his eyes.

"You fell?" she repeated his words, watching with another inkling of dread as the old man's left pupil refused to dilate. "Do you know what caused you to fall?" she asked another, more detailed question, meanwhile feeling his wife closing in on her from behind, her soft, shaky sobs filling the spaces between Leila's words. The man blinked slowly.

"I fell..."

His wife's sobs intensified but Leila forced herself to smile warmly up at the confused elderly man. "Alright, Mister Henderson, can you do me a favor?" she asked, reaching out to take his wrinkled, arthritis-ridden hands into her latex grip and smiling further when the man brought his unfocused eyes to meet hers. "Can you smile for me?"

Slowly, but surely, the man managed a weak sort of smile, in which the right half of his face managed to form the expression to match Leila's, but the left side remained sagged, stationary. Despite the disappointment she felt, she struggled not to let her own face indicate that anything serious had been revealed by that simple diagnostic test. Leila patted his hand gently, still grinning at the man as she rose to her feet.

"That's good, sweetie," she told him encouragingly. "I'll be right back." Once on her feet, she turned to the teary, trembling wife, who stood directly behind her, clutching a damp hankie to her wrinkled chin. Leila reached out a gloved hand to grip her gently beneath her skinny arm and lead her out into the hallway, where she turned to gaze down into her lined face. "I'm afraid your husband is showing symptoms of a stroke-" she explained in a very soft, quiet voice, but paused to allow Mrs. Henderson a sharp gasp, before she continued. "But I can't be certain of anything yet so I'm going to call my team up here so we can take him to the hospital, alright? We just need to be quick so I'm going to ask you to go back downstairs and just wait in your kitchen until one of us comes to get you. You can ride to the hospital with us if you'd like."

After a hurried and tearful explanation of how she would go get a small bag packed and wait in the kitchen as instructed, Leila watched the woman descend the stairs as fast as her legs would carry her, before she turned back into the bedroom, where Mr. Henderson remained seated, staring at the floor in a daze. The radio gave a momentary crackle of static before she spoke into it. "Jay, I've got a stroke up here," she said, keeping her voice somewhat low in an attempt to prevent the old man from hearing her words. "Bring up the stretcher and let's get him to GMH."

Within mere moments, Leila heard the front door open downstairs, followed by the sound of footsteps on the narrow wooden stairs, before Jay appeared on the landing, holding the head of the stretcher with Matt at the foot, just behind him. She nodded her head to Jay, then she turned and leaned down, reaching out place her hand gently on Mr. Henderson's arm. The old man looked up, blinking slowly.

"Okay, Albert, we're going to take you to the hospital," she told him gently, but in a loud enough voice that he could hear her. "Can I help you stand up?"

The task of getting the weak man onto the stretcher was a slow affair, but once he had been strapped onto it, the pace picked right back up and Leila walked quickly down the stairs in front of Matt and Jay, while they carried the now heavily laden stretcher behind her. Upon reaching the door, she opened it for them, but immediately moved out of the way, searching quickly for the kitchen, where she found Mrs. Henderson, still clutching her handkerchief to her chest. She looked up quickly upon hearing Leila approach, her eyes wide with panic as she shuffled toward her.

"Is he alright?" she asked hurriedly, her gaze scanning Leila's face as though reading it for any sign that something had gone wrong. When she only found a calm, reassuring smile there, the taught wrinkles in her face relaxed slightly, and she sighed when the paramedic nodded.

"We've got him in the ambulance now," Leila explained, reaching out toward the small kitchen table, where Mrs. Henderson's purse lay ready, to thread the strap over her shoulder and carry it for her. "You're more than welcome to ride with us to the hospital, or if you have a car of your-"

"No," the wife interrupted, pulling a sparse set of keys from atop the kitchen counter next to her. "I'll ride with you. I can't leave him." Leila could not prevent the grin that met her face, her heart warming from Mrs. Henderson's dedication to her spouse.

With the wife's frail hand tucked into the elbow of Leila's arm, she led her through the house and out into the early evening, where the ambulance sat at the curb, the doors open, the lights flashing in preparation to leave. As they approached, Jay hopped down from the back and held out his arm, leading the woman toward the cab of the vehicle, where he helped her climb up and inside. Leila meanwhile returned to her usual place in the main cabin, pausing for a moment to close the heavy doors. Matt was speaking to Mr. Henderson, where he lay on his back, strapped to the stretcher.

"Can you tell me your name?" he asked the man, adopting that very professional but caring voice Leila knew him to use inside of work...and perhaps outside of it as well, with his multiple lady-friends. The elderly man cleared his throat, blinking slowly at the ceiling of the moving ambulance.

"Albert...Henderson," he eventually answered, moving obediently as Leila wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his upper arm, placing either side of the stethoscope into her ears and pressing the chest piece of the device to the crook of his elbow. Vaguely, through the whooshing of the cuff being pressurized, Leila could hear Matt's voice, muffled through the ear pieces.

"Good," he said, once again using encouraging tones. "Are you on any medication for high blood pressure, Albert?"

This question was never answered, as the man before them allowed his eyes to close lethargically, the left side of his face appearing more drooped than ever. Matt shook his head, glancing to his right where Leila had just replaced her stethoscope around the back of her neck.

"What is it?" he asked her, referring to the number she had just deduced from the blood pressure test.

"One-sixty-five over eighty," she replied curtly, simultaneously committing the number to memory so she could inform the receiving physician at the hospital. "It's an Ischaemic stroke, I'll bet you anything. And we have no idea how long he sat like that before we got there." she concluded quietly to Matt, turning her head to look over her shoulder and attempting to recognize the passing buildings, to judge how close to the hospital they were. He nodded, heaving a sigh as he leaned forward in the jump seat, using his own penlight to check Mr. Henderson's pupils again.

"Hopefully the damage won't be permanent," he murmured, watching for himself as the elderly man's left pupil remained fixed, unable to dilate. Passing the light over to his right eye, he addressed Leila again. "Was his left pupil unresponsive back at the house?" he asked her, but only to sigh in disappointment when she nodded. "Well, hopefully the missus will be alright with him having a crooked smile..."

At this, Leila let a tiny grin onto her face, thinking back fleetingly to the old woman's adamant words in the kitchen of the house. "I think she'll be fine with it."

An hour later, after watching Mr. Henderson and his wife being whisked away by a team of nurses, the ambulance for firehouse 14 was finally pulling back into the bay, where Leila and Matt pushed open the doors to climb out. The sun had not yet set on the day, though the bright overhead lights had already come on, shining florescent beams down on the team as they pulled out the stretcher to clean it. As Matt unraveled a length of paper towels, Jay walked up, wheeling the large gray trashcan behind him.

"So are you two still planning on going to that banquet tonight?" he asked, glancing first to Matt, who in turn looked quickly over to Leila. Sensing his gaze on the side of her face, she raised her eyebrows at him as she looked up from the foot of the stretcher. A shrug raised and lowered her shoulders a moment later.

"What?" she asked, but only to frown when Matt tossed his arms.

"_Well?" _he began expectantly, placing his latex gloved hands on his narrow waist. "_Are _we still going to the banquet?"

To this, Leila huffed irritably. "Since when did your plan to go hinge on me?" she asked, glancing over with just her eyes when she heard Jay stifle a laugh. "I said-"

"-you would go!" Matt exclaimed, cutting over her to finish her sentence, his distressed tone venturing dangerously close to whining. "I begged you to go with me and you said yes!"

"Yeah, but that was about five days ago," Leila reminded him, leaning down momentarily to wipe the legs of the stretcher and rolling her eyes when she heard Matt give a true whine from somewhere above her. "Besides, it's already six o'clock. I'd still have to go home, get a shower-"

"Okay, so we'll be fashionably late then," Matt once again interrupted, leaning over the stretcher toward her with his hands braced on the black mat. His face formed that characteristic pleading, softened look as he smiled charmingly at her. "_Please _go? You'll look beautiful, no matter how much time you have to get ready."

Leila's eyes rolled generously as Jay burst into a loud laugh at Matt's antics. "That sort of flattery doesn't work on me, Matt," she told him, tossing a wad of dirtied paper towels into the trashcan beside Jay. "_But, _if you really want me to go, then I'll just leave now so I can go get ready and _you _two can finish this up!" And with that, she walked away, smiling to herself at the blank, somewhat confused expression on Matt's face, just a moment before she heard Jay throw the roll of paper towels at him.

"Good one, Casanova!"

So with the guys left behind to finish cleaning the ambulance, Leila departed, wishing she had not been so hasty in agreeing to go with Matt. Her apartment was still a wreck and it was beyond probable that the memorial banquet would be rather dull, with mediocre food at best. She would be surrounded by city officials, most of whom she had never met, with only Matt at her side to help diffuse the tension, assuming of course that he was not too distracted by the women that were sure to be there. But at least, she thought, if it really turned out to be terrible, she could leave relatively early into the event and not be missed, especially if Matt's latest pursuit happened to be there in all her blonde, medical examiner glory.

Once she had reached her apartment, she wasted no time in shedding her uniform, leaving it in a crumpled pile by the door to her bathroom, before she disappeared into the shower, being infinitely careful not to get her hair wet. It was still in desperate need of a relaxer and getting worse every day; to get it wet or even slightly damp meant certain death for her desire of a sleek, straightened look for the evening. So after a quick lather and a hurried shave, she climbed out, wrapping her favorite fluffy bathrobe about herself, to stay warm while she searched for something suitable to wear.

Leila had never been one for pink and frills, had never really owned a nice dress beyond what she had worn to prom during high school, so the endeavor of finding an outfit for the banquet was a bit more extensive than one would think. She pulled out many skirts, but either deemed them too short or too tight, until, with most of her wardrobe strewn across her bed, Leila finally stumbled upon a very simple black dress that she could not remember wearing for quite a long time. It had no sleeves but was not revealing in any sense of the word, with a modest neckline and a length that fell to her knees, the material hugging her body closely. However, after putting it on and positioning herself before the tall body mirror across from the bed, she tilted her head to the side and turned sideways to the mirror, eying her curvy profile and wondering if perhaps the dress as a little _too _casual for the event. Turning to the sleeping gray cat on the bed, she tossed her arms somewhat dejectedly.

"What about this, Murph?" she asked, grinning when the cat simply rolled onto his back and stretched his front legs out as far as they could go, emitting a quiet meow as he did. With a groan, Leila's smile dropped quickly from view and she rolled her eyes, turning away from the bed to reenter her bathroom. "Christ, I'm becoming the 'crazy cat lady' already..."

With the time rapidly approaching seven o'clock, Leila dumped out her rather small supply of makeup on the counter, rifling through the mess of broken eye shadows and the residual traces of powder that lingered on the plastic containers, until she found her half-used bottle of foundation. Another sigh of annoyance slipped past her lips as she turned the bottle upside down and dabbed her finger against the opening, watching and waiting until enough of the thick liquid had coated her skin. Being of mixed race made finding the right shade of facial makeup a chore, which she figured would explain why she rarely wore it. Her skin tone hovered precariously between African-American and Caucasian, either tanning dramatically during the summer months, or paling in the winter, and the abundance of freckles along her upper cheeks and nose did not exactly help either. During her childhood, her mother had told her lovingly that they were 'angel kisses' and that the small, dusted brown spots made her infinitely more special than the other kids...Leila had never really believed that but always appreciated the sentiment nonetheless.

With her freckles reasonably hidden and her dark eyelashes treated to a coating of mascara, Leila finally stepped into her one and only pair of heels, figuring that the time had come for her to rush out and meet Matt. She forewent telling Murphy goodbye on the promise that she would _not _allow herself to become the crazy cat lady before the age of thirty, and instead walked straight to her front door, hastily hooking her grandmother's string of pearls about her neck. It was still uncertain to her whether the dress was too casual, so she assumed adding the pearl necklace would be a nice touch, just in case.

Seeing how the sun had just set and Leila was not stupid enough to walk the streets of Gotham alone at night, she instead went for her car, hoping that a garage would be available, or at the very least, a parking space would be open near the convention center. Her heels made walking properly somewhat difficult and as a woman who rarely wore this type of shoe in the first place, she figured the smallest amount of distance between herself and a chair would be preferable. Falling on one's face in a crowded room full of city officials could potentially end up hurting more emotionally than physically, though she had to wonder if giving everyone something to laugh at would help lighten the mood.

Fortunately enough, a self-park garage just happened to sit only a block or two from the Gotham convention center, so after parking her car, Leila got out, reluctantly bringing her nearly empty, black clutch purse along with her, upon remembering that her dress did not have pockets. Her phone would absolutely have to be with her, in case the memorial turned out to be as dull as she was expecting and she needed to take a fake call.

The heels of her shoes made an oddly satisfying, rhythmic clicking against the concrete as she made her way across a side street, crossing over to the other side, where up ahead, she could see a group of people, wearing mostly black, standing outside in small groups. From her vantage point, she could make out a few of the men wearing their formal police uniforms, the gleaming name tags and ranking ornaments catching the light from the streetlamp as they shifted about uneasily. Leila exhaled slowly through her nose, allowing herself a moment to wonder how they felt. So many officers and other city personnel had lost their lives over the past month, fallen victim to the Joker's chaotic plan, leaving behind their families and friends to grieve, hating the man who had caused their pain. She could not imagine the sort of emotions they were going through, or what she could ever possibly say to the widows to express her condolences.

The closer she grew to the crowd outside the center, the clearer the faces became, until she finally recognized Matt, standing awkwardly off to the side, pretending to do something on his phone, while glancing up and down the street every few seconds. A small smile lifted the corners of her lips. Matt may have had his faults, but she really adored him when it came down to it, like the older brother she never had. Of course, way back when she was first hired, he had asked her out, but Leila had swiftly declined, and the incident was never spoken of again...Though every once in a while, Jay liked to bring it up, just to watch Matt blush and hastily mention the Cowboys game that he had not seen the night before.

Upon his second or third time looking up from his phone, Matt seemed to spot her and Leila noticed his shoulders relax as he sighed in relief. "_There _you are," he groaned when she walked up to him, passing behind the group of officers as they began to file into the building. "I was afraid you weren't coming," he added, stowing his phone away in the pocket of his black slacks. Leila ignored his comment, instead letting her eyes drop to the absolutely heinous green tie he was wearing. Matt took a step back when he noticed her nose start to wrinkle. "What?" he asked defensively, reaching up to smooth his hand down the middle of his chest. "Is it ugly?"

Leila nodded, glancing to either side of her as she quickly unbuttoned her clutch. "It's awful, Matt," she answered, holding out the opened purse in front of her and shifting to the side to block him from the view of the glass doors. "Take it off and put it in here, then unbutton the top button of your shirt," She glanced over her shoulder through the glass, to the inside of the building, as he quickly untied the knot and slipped it from around his neck. "I swear you're color blind."

"See?" he asked, finally balling up the tie and stuffing it into her purse before reaching up to undo the top button on his crisp white shirt. "What would I have done if you hadn't showed up? I would've walked around in there like a chump with an ugly-ass green tie and it would have been all your fault."

Leila nodded distractedly, fastening her clutch again as Matt twisted his neck to either side, as if wearing the tie for such a short amount of time had caused him physical pain. "Yeah, all _my _fault..." she grumbled, but then looked over at him. "Listen, if the food sucks and we don't know anyone, can we _please _leave?" she asked, arching her eyebrows sharply when he glanced at the window, but only to bring his hand up and smooth a crooked piece of his purposely messy brown hair in his reflection on the glass.

"Yeah, sure," he answered, leaving Leila to roll her eyes when she recognized the distant tone his voice took on to indicate when he was no longer listening. "Let's go in, shall we?"

The inside of the convention center seemed to hum with quiet voices, the distant clanking of glasses and cheap ceramic plates reaching her ears as Leila followed Matt toward a large room on the right, only for both of them to stop in the doorway, their jaws hanging slightly slack. The room was absolutely _full _of people. Leila felt an almost instinctual urge to turn and leave right then, but Matt was already shifting to face her, sliding his hands awkwardly into his pockets. His mouth opened to speak, but before he could do so, his eyes slid to the right, over her shoulder, to something behind her. Leila frowned at his sudden shift in attention, and she turned to see who or what he had spotted, figuring miserably that she was about to lose his company to the fabled blonde medical examiner. Instead, her mildly annoyed expression relaxed slowly into blankness.

Across the room stood a wide stage, camouflaged and nearly covered in large arrangements of what appeared to be funeral flowers, some in the shape of a cross, others in a simple wreath, each one bearing a yellow ribbon. Over a dozen white candles had been set in front of a framed picture of the man or woman whom they memorialized, each placed on elegant podiums of different heights, scattered in the remaining space on the platform. Their flames were soft, flickering amongst the flowers, casting odd shadows on the photographed faces behind them. Leila had to admit it was a beautiful way to arrange a memorial for so many people, but she could not help but feel like the large, charming picture of the handsome and once fully in-tact Harvey Dent overshadowed the others. Matt's voice next to her pulled her attention away.

"Okay..." he muttered, glancing around somewhat shiftily. "This is...kinda weird. You wanna go?" he asked and Leila was just a split second from replying with a loud 'YES', when someone called out, "Matt!" It took a great deal of effort to keep her from letting out a loud groan right then. They both turned toward the source of the noise, only to spot a young police officer, in formal uniform, walking toward them. His handsome, angled face bore a somewhat strained smile, and his hand extended out toward Matt as he drew to within a few feet of them. Matt met his handshake midway, smiling sheepishly as though the other man had heard him planning to leave.

"Glad you could make it," the man said, smiling warmly as his eyes glanced to Matt's right, where Leila stood silent. Matt nodded, pulling a very grave look onto his face.

"I couldn't miss it, Mark," he answered, putting his medic training into action once again and allowing his voice to drip with remorse. Leila fought back the urge to turn and ask him if he still wanted to leave. "I just feel so bad for you guys on the force. You lost so many people..." The man named Mark nodded, glancing down at his highly polished, almost reflective black shoes.

"Yeah, man," he began. "We lost Barry, one of the rookies. But the two-five...they lost about five of their men, when they were transporting Dent over to central. I still can't believe it."

This was precisely why Leila had not wanted to attend. She was stuck standing there by Matt's side, listening to him give carefully worded sentiments of apology and condolences to his friends, while she struggled to maintain a very solemn expression, nodding and giving a groan where appropriate. It was not that she did not feel the deepest pity and sympathy for these men, nor was it that she just simply did not care, but rather the fact that she felt so sorely out of place. She knew none of these people, only recognizing them by face from seeing them either on the news or out on the street. But of course, Matt had _insisted, _claiming that he would not know _anyone!_

So while Matt made his way around the room, shaking hands and offering his deepest sympathy, not bothering to introduce her to anyone, Leila let her eyes drift through the crowd. A blonde woman near the stage was crying steadily into a tattered napkin, stained with mascara, while the people around her placed their hands on her arms and back, sharing in her grief. Leila could only imagine this woman to be a widow, likely to one of the young police officers, whose picture was being featured alongside a candle upon the platform. This same situation was present in several other places throughout the room, each woman, some old, some young, surrounded by a gathering of comforters, and mildly, Leila had to wonder why the poor widows would even bother showing up to something like this. If it had been _her _husband who had been killed, were she to have one, who had been killed, the last place she would have been found was at a memorial banquet...

Just then, Leila's eyes drifted onto a half circle of older men, and she gasped when she recognized the tallest of the group, a rather heavyset black man, wearing a crisp suit and a look of perfected calmness. She turned to Matt to quickly grab his arm as he finished a conversation with another of his friends. He arched one eyebrow in confusion but Leila was already explaining.

"Come with me, I want you to meet someone!" she exclaimed, and began to lead him away from the drink table, toward the stage, in front of which stood the group of men.

It was nearly impossible for Leila to keep a smile off of her face as she approached, practically dragging Matt along behind her by the sleeve of his shirt. She could hear him asking questions but was not listening as the men finally stopped talking and turned to look as Leila appeared in their midst. The man she had recognized turned to look down, before she noticed his dark eyes light up in a surprised smile. One of his hands reached out to touch her arm.

"Leila, honey!" he exclaimed, holding out his arms as she stepped forward to hug him around his wide middle. "What are you doing here?" he asked, glancing to her left where Matt stood somewhat sheepishly behind her with his hands in his pockets. Leila stepped back from their embrace, to grin widely up at him.

"I could ask you the same thing, Dad," she replied, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. It was amazing to her how much more comfortable she felt and how quickly her attitude had changed, just by having one single person there that she knew. It didn't exactly hurt that this was her father either. Before he answered her question, he turned to the men with whom he had just been speaking, to give them a nod.

"Excuse us for a moment?" he asked them politely, his well known reputation instantly speaking for itself as the other men moved to walk away, giving the father and daughter privacy in which to converse. He then looked back down at Leila, the familiar wrinkles next to his eyes creasing in his smile.

"You remember Captain Hargassy, of station house 25?" he asked, glancing across the room and nodding his head toward an older white man, in a highly decorated formal police uniform. When Leila recognized the man's profile, she nodded and her father continued. "He invited your mother and I, but-" He paused when Leila's mouth opened quickly, to ask where her mom was, but he went on, obviously having sensed this question coming. "-she had a meeting out at P.S.17 in regards to the upcoming school year. They're drafting some new, heavier security restrictions and needed her approval as chairman of the school board." As her dad's explanation concluded, Leila nodded, but then gave a vague start when she felt Matt's shoulder brush against her own, a very subtle, tactful way of reminding her he was still there. She grinned again, holding out her hand toward him.

"Oh, Dad, this is Matt Park," she introduced him, smiling when the two men shook hands. "He works with me at the fire house."

"Ah, yes, Matt," he said warmly, though with a very characteristic, smug tone to his voice. "I've heard good things about you. Edward Hawkin, Leila's father, as I'm sure you've deduced by now." Matt, across from Edward, was nodding, grinning that certain, awkward way he did when feeling slightly intimidated; Leila could not help but find this endearing, of both Matt, _and _her father.

"Actually, I recognized you before I realized you were Leila's dad," Matt answered, sliding his hands boyishly into the pockets of his black slacks. "You're the head of neurology at Gotham General, right?"

"Well, what _used _to be Gotham General," Edward corrected him, giving a grave shake of his head. "Until they begin work on the new building, I'll be practicing alongside Dr. Tanner at Gotham Municipal. Which reminds me," Edward paused, glancing over his shoulder quickly, before down at Matt, then over to Leila. "Word has it, your team was the one responsible for giving the Joker an examination once he had been captured. Is that correct?" he asked, his dark eyes once again bouncing from Leila to Matt and back again. It was immediately obvious to her why her father had double checked that no one was standing near them; the name of the Joker was likely not welcome in this particular room. Leila stammered somewhat hesitantly while Matt nodded proudly, confirming this rumor for her father. Edward went on, this time, his eyes focused on those of his daughter. "I _also _heard that _you _were the one to actually perform the exam and that this man somehow learned your full name."

At this, Matt stayed mercifully silent, but the way his eyes had widened and his head turned to stare directly at the side of her face, Leila figured he might as well have begun screaming at the top of his lungs that this was true and that it was partly his fault. Slowly, she nodded, but bit her bottom lip as she stared up at her dad. "Yeah, it was me," she answered a few moments later, but then took a half-step closer to him, resting her hand on his upper arm, her eyes wide, imploring. "Mom doesn't know, does she? She asked me about it but I don't think she knew it was our team."

When Edward shook his head, Leila sighed in relief. "No, your mother does not know, nor am I fool enough to tell her," he said in his deep, comforting baritone voice. "She'd have you moving back into the house before you could blink, or otherwise calling you every moment of every day," He paused, reaching down to take her hand and pat it between his much larger, soft ones. "I value your sanity too much for that, dear." Leila laughed, nodding her head in agreement.

"Thanks, Daddy."

For several minutes, Leila, Matt and her father stood there, chatting genially about this and that, about the upcoming gala for the hospital fundraiser, about how Bruce Wayne was one of the top V.I.P's expected to be in attendance, until a terrible, loud whine traveled through the room, from the microphone on the stage behind them. Nearly everyone in the room gave a jump at the sudden noise and turned toward the stage, where a man in a navy blue suit was staring at the black microphone confusedly, as though sorely tempted to tap it again with his finger. Instead, he looked up at the people in the room, clearing his throat as he leaned forward slightly.

"If everyone could please take their seats, we'll be starting soon," he said, his magnified voice immediately followed by a dull smattering of talk and the shuffling of shoes against old carpet. Leila turned to her dad, raising her eyebrows as he turned slightly to set his wine glass down on the table beside him. She motioned to the chair in front of her.

"Is it alright if we sit with you?" she asked. Edward shrugged his shoulders, glancing about the room, clearly searching for the group of men with whom he had been talking prior to her arrival.

"I don't see why not," he replied, pulling out a chair next to the place where his wine glass stood. As Leila sat in the chair he had just made available for her, with Matt on her other side, her father followed suit, asking, "Did you have something to eat?"

Leila glanced over her shoulder toward the back of the room, to where a long white linen draped buffet table had been set up, but she shook her head in response to the question, Matt copying her actions on her left. She could remember walking past the table earlier and struggling not to wrinkle her nose at the array of unappetizing food. She could _also _remember Matt's whispered invitation to join him for a greasy burger at the diner down the street once the banquet let out. Turning back to Edward, she shrugged with a smile.

"No, we weren't hungry. We ate right after our shift at six," she lied with ease, hoping and praying her empty stomach would not betray her with a loud growl once the room had quieted.

After several minutes of shuffling around, while people looked to find a seat amongst friends or family, every round table had eventually been filled, and those who had been unlucky enough to find a chair with their back to the stage had turned their seats around. The large banquet room had then quieted, a very funeral home type hush falling over the tables, until finally, a tall, dark haired man, whom Leila recognized as the mayor of Gotham City, stepped onto the platform. He cleared his throat as he pulled a small stack of index cards from the pocket of his suit coat, which he rested on the surface of the podium before him.

Leila had seen this man on TV many times over the previous weeks, urging the citizens to remain vigilant, alert to their surroundings and promising that he and his hoards of police officials were doing everything they could to find and punish the Joker. Up close, she had to admit that he did not look well, and honestly, she could not blame him. Deep, dark circles had formed under his eyes, giving him the look of a person who had aged dramatically over a very short period of time. Again, he cleared his throat, linking his fingers together on the podium before him as he began to speak.

"First and foremost, allow me to thank you for coming tonight," he started, purposely letting his eyes glance through the room, in an effort to give them the impression that he was speaking to each of them individually. "While I know the circumstances of this event are not exactly what I would call ideal, it gives me true hope for this city that our people can still come together to mourn and to celebrate the lives we've lost over the past few weeks."

Leila tuned out at this point, allowing her eyes to drift listlessly away from the mayor, and onto the same blonde woman she had noticed earlier, who was still crying steadily into her ratty napkin. Her heart simply ached for this woman, her sense of compassion causing her to wish there was something she could do for her, despite having never even met her. Leila had never dated someone she could even begin to consider 'husband material', so she could only imagine how devastating it would be to lose one's spouse. She certainly hoped the woman did not have children; that would only make matters worse.

Movement on the stage caught Leila's attention, bringing her eyes back to the podium, where the police commissioner, Jim Gordon, whom she had also seen on the television many times lately, had taken the place of the mayor. He too bore the look of great exhaustion and grief as he began to list names from a slip of paper on the podium's surface.

"James Tattering, patrol officer of unit twenty-three," he read, before glancing to his right where two uniformed officers descended the short steps from the stage, bearing something in their hands as they approached another young woman. An elderly couple sat on either side of her, the older woman and who Leila assumed was her daughter-in-law both crying quietly. As the officers reached the table, the young widow reached out, taking the items from the men as they offered them to her. Leila's heart sank, warm tears beginning to sting her eyes as the light from overhead caught the gleam of the object; the patrol officer's silver police badge, and a medal. The young woman positively dissolved into tears and as Leila watched, she had to wonder if perhaps it would have been easier and less horrifyingly sad to simply deliver these artifacts in private.

This flow of events continued through all eighteen names, either the parents, friends, wives or husbands of the deceased being awarded a medal of sacrifice and the badge of their loved ones. The whole time, the room remained completely silent, until the last name had been read and at once, every person in the room, the some odd one hundred people there, simultaneously rose to their feet and began to applaud. Not for those grieving nor for Jim Gordon's heartfelt speech, but for those who had died, as though giving them one last communal round of thanks for their service and sacrifice to the city.

As the noise died down and everyone returned to their seats, Commissioner Gordon stepped back toward the podium, anxiously smoothing his tie along the front of his chest, glancing down at his notes before he continued.

"Lastly, of Harvey Dent," he began, glancing out at his audience. "As Gotham's District Attorney, I must admit, Harvey and I did not exactly see eye to eye at first. Though as time went on, the more closely we worked together, the more I came to see, the more we _all _came to see how passionate and dedicated this man was to justice, and yet fairness-"

At that moment, Leila's eyes shifted to the right of the stage, where an older man had just come trotting up, his face a twisted mess of anxiety as he approached the commissioner's left side. The last of Jim's interrupted word echoed slightly in the large room as he took a step away from the podium and microphone, leaning in so the man could whisper urgently in his ear. Leila could see the people sitting around her turning their heads to glance at one another, eyebrows arched in confusion at the sudden interruption, while the dull rumble of low voices broke out once again, filling the silence. However just as Leila moved to copy the other people and turn to frown at her father, to ask what he thought was going on, the man on stage trotted back toward the short set of steps, leaving a very pale, wide-eyed Jim Gordon behind. He gave a short clearing of his throat as he returned to the podium, and even from where she was sitting, Leila could see a very noticeable mix of expressions in his gray eyes; anger, dread, confusion, and unmistakable fear. Leila felt her empty stomach twist into an instinctual ball of anxiety.

"I'm...I'm so sorry-" Gordon began, his eyes bouncing through the room as though he was unsure where to look. "-but we need to evacuate this room, as quickly as possible," he continued, and in the blink of an eye, the brave, curt police commissioner had returned. Stepping away from the podium, he raised his voice to speak over the now slightly panicked voices filling the room. "If the back row of tables could please stand and make their way toward the exit, the officers will show you-"

"Jim, what is going on?" demanded a voice from down near the stage, while the farthest row of tables remained quite stationary. Leila sat up straight to see who had just spoken and felt Matt's hand reach out to grip the back of her chair. Jim Gordon took a deep breath, his hand still outstretched, from where he had just pointed to the people at the back of the room. Another voice broke out from somewhere behind Leila, and every head turned to look.

"We're not going anywhere until you tell us what's happening!" the male voice nearly shouted. Leila looked back to see that a young man had risen from his chair and was now glaring angrily at the commissioner. "What did Jansen tell you?!"

As this question rang through the room, every head once again swiveled toward the stage, where Gordon was now looking as though he were ready to faint. Though when he spoke, his voice was eerily yet decisively calm.

"I was just informed that-" he paused, taking another deep breath. "- The Joker has escaped custody."

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A/N: FINALLY! We can get to the GOOD stuff! Again, thanks so much for all the follows and reviews, it really helps me write and stay inspired! I hope you enjoyed this chapter and you're just as excited for the next one as I am... ; ] -QoM


	4. A Brave Face

"Leila, _please_ let me take you home," Edward was pleading with his daughter. "You can stay with Mom and I tonight, then we can get your car in the morning."

Matt, Leila, and her father stood out in the middle of the street in front of the convention center, in the midst of a crowd of onlookers from the memorial, watching as one emergency vehicle after another pulled up to the scene. The entire city block had been closed off, now bathed in a spectacle of flashing police lights. The mayor and more important city officials had been escorted away from the building promptly and though everyone had been urged to go straight home, most of the throng remained, talking amongst themselves in hushed, anxious voices. Leila shook her head, finally pulling her eyes away from a bomb sniffing dog as he was led from the building.

"Daddy, I'm fine, seriously," she told him, smiling calmly up at him. "They said he escaped, not that he was on a hunt for the female paramedic who examined him a week ago." A somewhat hollow laugh escaped her after these words, though this did not seem to soothe her father or Matt as the two men both remained staring at her with matching, anxious expressions. She rolled her eyes. "I'm going home and staying there until I go back to work on Monday. I'll be fine, _I promise." _

Edward sighed, reaching out with both of his large, soft hands to rub her upper arms soothingly. "If you insist. But I'd feel much better knowing you at least had an escort back to your car...Perhaps-" He paused, turning his head this way and that, searching quickly for a nearby police officer whom he could ask, but Matt was already stepping in.

"I could walk her back," he offered, glancing from Leila, up to her father and back again. Upon noticing the newly formed scowl on her face, he hastily went on. "You know, just to her car, to make sure she gets in safe."

There was a moment where Edward took a deep breath, squinting somewhat contemplatively at Matt, as though trying to assess whether he could trust him with his daughter. After a few seconds, he nodded, exhaling heavily.

"Alright, that sounds fine. Thank you," he finally agreed, patting Matt on the shoulder before turning to Leila. "You will call me as _soon _as you get inside your apartment, understand?" he asked in a suddenly stern voice, reminding Leila of years past when he warned her strictly to be home by midnight '_and not a moment later'. _Despite her instinctive urge to inform him that she was not a child anymore and was not even remotely scared that the Joker might be after her, she nodded politely, stepping forward to kiss his cheek.

"I will, Dad," she answered, glancing to the side when Matt rounded her elbow, glancing up and down the street as though the president himself had ordered him as her personal guard. She ignored this, gazing imploringly up at her father. "And _please _tell Mom not to freak out. I'm really not worried, so she shouldn't be either."

After being assured that he would attempt to keep her mother as calm as possible, Leila said goodnight to her dad and allowed Matt to lead her away from the scene, passing between the parked, barricaded police cars. By now, her feet were killing her after standing in her heels for most of the night, so the temptation to remove them and simply walk barefoot back to her car was very great. However, Matt was taking his job of escorting her _very _seriously, so it seemed unlikely that he would allow her to stop for even a moment to remove her shoes.

It rather remarkable to Leila that he had not cricked his neck yet, as he constantly turned his head to glance behind them and after the fourth or fifth time he had done this, she sighed, rolling her eyes, struggling to keep up with him in her tall heels.

"Matt, do you really think he's about to jump out from behind a dumpster?" she asked waspishly, blowing a wayward lock of hair away from her face as a breeze blew it there. "I swear, you and Dad are being so paranoid about this."

At these words, Matt suddenly stopped, at the corner of the entrance to the parking garage and he turned to face her, his expression stern.

"If there's anything we do know about this guy, it's that he's unpredictable," he said, once again glancing up and down the street to either side of them. "He's...he's _crazy! _Who knows what he's after?"

Leila folded her arms across her middle stubbornly. "Yeah, but I highly doubt his..._masterminded plan _involves some random girl he met a week ago. I mean _seriously, _he doesn't even know where I live!" she exclaimed, shifting her weight from one heel to another as her toes began grow numb against the pain. Reaching out to her, Matt used his hand under her arm to turn her into the garage, where they began walking uphill to the first level of cars.

"He could easily find that out, Leila," he replied dismissively, glancing over his shoulder.

Just a few yards ahead of them sat her faithful gold Camry, and with it, the sanctuary of her car seat where she could take off her shoes and wiggle her protesting toes. She gave a groan of weariness as she approached the driver's side door, then turned to give Matt a very blank, annoyed glare when he opened her car door for her, once again glancing over his shoulder toward the entrance to the stairs across the lot from them. When he turned back to her and noticed the look on her face, his eyebrows furrowed, while Leila tossed her hand exasperatedly.

"You wanna sit in my lap and drive me home too?" she asked, pulling open the door to her car, to slide into the seat and kick off her shoes. Glancing back up, she noticed Matt's expression deepen, causing her let out a laugh as she pushed the key into the ignition. "Matt, _seriously, _it's going to be _fine. _You're just feeling guilty because _you _let my name slip in front of him. But honestly, he probably doesn't even remember it," At this, she reached up, using one finger to push his hand away from the roof of her car, where he had been leaning into the open doorway. "Now go home. I'll text you when I get to my place, just so you don't lose any sleep over my well-being." she concluded sarcastically, earning her a hefty eye-roll from Matt as he turned from her car to finally begin walking away.

The drive home was eerily quiet. After passing through several green lights in a row, Leila wondered if the citizens of Gotham already knew of the Joker's escape, if there had been a broadcast on the news yet. The streets certainly seemed more empty than usual for a Friday night, no staggering groups of newly twenty-one year old's, no classy, wealthy couples walking back to their fancy brownstones and vaguely, she had to wonder if this was perhaps an ominous sign. _Was _she being a bit foolish to take the news of the Joker's escape so lightly? If the whole city was feeling that fear, was she being downright stupid to think she alone was safe, when that madman knew her full name?

"No," she said obstinately, aloud to herself as she pulled up to a stop light. There was absolutely no way he could want anything to do with her. She was just some random paramedic, some offhanded person that had only given him a simple exam. Like she had said, he likely didn't even remember her name. Besides, what use was she to him? It wasn't as though she was famous or wealthy enough to hold hostage. She wasn't a criminal for him to exploit or team up with. She was just a regular person, living a regular life, working a regular job. There was no way-

Leila gave a gasp and jumped as a loud car horn split the air beyond the car, alerting her to the fact that the traffic light before her was green and had been that way for several seconds. Sighing, she pushed her foot on the gas, placing one hand on her chest, where she could feel her heart banging away against her sternum. All she had to do was get home, get inside, lock the door and crawl into bed. Perhaps then she could turn on the news...find out if the officials knew anything specific about the Joker's escape or his possible location.

It had been all too easy to play the bold card back at the convention center with her dad and Matt, but as Leila walked along the empty, and suddenly much longer hallway to her apartment door, she could not help herself from glancing back over her shoulder every few moments. A low thump of music was playing from one of the units, the bass' rhythm giving an eerie, heartbeat-type sound, to match the pace of her feet. Her shoes had remained off and were now being carried in her hand as she walked along. It made her feel stupid to have even thought of a scenario such as this, but she figured if _someone _were to jump out or sneak up on her from behind and if she were to swing hard enough, the pointed heel of her shoe just might break skin. She could not believe how stupid she had been to act so brave and nonchalant with her father just a few minutes prior.

However, the moment she reached her apartment door, unlocked it and stepped inside, a wave of comforting relief washed over her. Just the sight of her safe, empty home was enough to bring back those carefree emotions from earlier, making her feel as though nothing could harm her while in the confines of this place. Leila exhaled heavily, dropping her shoes on the hardwood floor near the kitchen before moving straight toward the fridge, tossing her black clutch purse onto the counter as she went. The food at the memorial had looked revolting, as expected, so her stomach was now completely empty and complaining loudly. Just as she reached for the door handle to the fridge, she jumped when her phone began ringing on the counter behind her. She sighed, rolling her eyes at her own startled reaction, and reached out to answer the call upon seeing that it was her father.

After being asked several times if she made it home safely, if her door and windows were securely locked and after promising that she would call him in the morning, Leila hastily put together a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich, her curiosity to see the news outweighing her desire to cook a whole meal. The time was only just nearing nine-thirty once she plopped down on her couch next to Murphy, but if her assumptions were correct, the regular programming would have been interrupted for the breaking story of the Joker's escape from custody. Of course, there was every chance that the media had been warned to keep it hushed for the time being, at least until most of the details had been put together. This was not the case, as was immediately obvious the second Leila turned to the main news channel.

"-urging the city to be observant and aware of their surroundings. Any suspicious behavior should be reported to the police immediately," came the first words through the television speakers. Footage of a wrecked armored police vehicle was being shown, the back doors thrown wide, revealing an empty compartment. Leila brought her feet up onto the couch, curling in on herself as she nibbled absentmindedly on a bit of crust, her eyes wide.

"For those who are just now joining us, this is the scene of the Joker's escape earlier this evening along 31st and Main street. Two officers were pronounced dead, along with one corrections officer in critical condition. Commissioner Gordon has urged citizens to remain indoors tonight and to take every precaution possible to ensure their safety."

_So I was right, _Leila thought to herself, reflecting on the barrenness of the streets during her drive home. The city had been warned to stay inside and it seemed, to her surprise, that everyone was taking this seriously. There had been city-wide threats before, but a select group of idiots could have always been found throwing extreme caution to the wind and going about their business as usual, walking the streets late at night as though daring the evildoers to mess with them. It seemed _this _time though, the threat was real to them. Everyone had seen, over the past month, just how serious the Joker was, how he could get to anyone through manipulation or a few well placed pawns. His ability to evade capture was surprisingly impressive and it seemed anyone willing to supply information on him had to be ready to lose their life one way or another. A shiver wracked Leila's body and she quickly stood from her couch, crossing over to the window, to pull the long curtains across it. One could never be too careful, right?

Returning to her spot on the couch, Leila curled back into her previous position with her long legs tucked up against her chest, watching as more footage from the scene of escape was played. The same information was being repeated, with the words changed only slightly to make it seem fresh, as was typically the case with breaking news, when the details were still hazy. Leila's shoulders heaved as she took a deep breath and exhaled, leaning forward to turn off the TV. She figured that if anything new was discovered overnight, it would be on the news in the morning. For now, it seemed as though there was not much to report other than the fact that he had escaped and if she sat there long enough, listening to this over and over, it would only help to make her paranoid.

As she picked up the remote to turn off the television, her jaw stretching in a wide yawn, her breath hitched in her throat when a new image suddenly appeared on the screen; a picture of a man with green hair, wearing an orange jumpsuit. Leila's skin erupted into a prickly coating of chills. Quickly, she pressed the pause button on her remote to freeze the frame.

The picture had seemingly been taken the very same night that she had examined him, as she could see the white sterile strips along the right side of his face, where she, _personally,_ had cleaned the makeup from his skin and applied them to close the deep cuts. It seemed the rest of the paint had been removed later, likely by force, revealing several ugly purple, yellowing bruises along his left cheek and jaw. Though these previously unnoticed marks were not what Leila was staring at; it was the expression on his mutilated face.

It was almost as though he was staring directly into her soul, just as he had in the ambulance while she wiped filthy greasepaint from around his eyebrow. The deeply malicious, yet invasive look in his eyes was just as present in this mugshot as it had been that night, and had almost the same effect on her.

A heavy dose of fear spread through her as she stared at the screen, her eyes dropping to the visible, hellish scars on either side of his mouth, curving upward in his devilish smirk, a grin that spoke clearly of formulating plans, unfinished work in the outside world. Wildly, she wondered how the police could have ever fooled themselves into thinking they had locked him away for good. All one had to do was take a single look at this man's expression, in just his mugshot, to know that he had not finished what he started, that he still had other plans. His grin was almost taunting, mocking the city for thinking he had finally been captured and their terror had come to an end.

With a jerk, Leila pushed the power button on the remote before flinging the device away from her as though it had burned her. The television across from the couch was now blank, though a vague outline of the Joker had been left in the screen, fading into the black as she quickly stood up and walked away, shaking her head in an effort to clear the image from her mind. She was just freaking herself out, like watching a horror movie alone at night then thinking every small noise from then on was someone trying to break in. She had not been scared in the slightest while out with her father and Matt, so there was no reason a simple picture should have changed that. All she had to do was go about her business as usual for the next two days, then go back to work on Monday. Everything would be fine.

As was typically the case, Leila's days off seemed to fly by at an unnaturally fast pace. One minute, she was waking up on Saturday morning, without so much as a thought about watching the news, the next, she was being woken by her alarm at nine o'clock on Monday morning. She now found herself climbing out of her car at the fire station, just as Matt and Jay pulled up into the parking spaces on either side of her. The familiar ambulance was rolling into the bay across the parking lot from them, where the other team of paramedics would unload after finishing their early morning shift.

Leila looked over at Matt when he rounded the back of his jeep, adjusting the bag on his shoulder and wearing an expression of mild surprise as he glanced her up and down. She held out her arms demonstratively.

"See?" she asked, grinning widely. "I _told _you I'd still be alive." Matt rolled his eyes.

"It's only been like two days, Leila," he replied warningly, glancing over the top of her head at Jay as he joined them in their walk up to the bay. "You have no idea if he's still-"

"No one's seen hide nor hair of him since that night," Jay jumped into the conversation. He had obviously seen the news. "If he's got a lick of sense, he's got as far away from this city as possible by now."

On Leila's other side, Matt tutted skeptically. "That sounds like wishful thinking to me," he commented, leaving Jay to let out a chuckle.

"No, that's common sense thinking," he corrected. "Why would he stay here and risk getting caught again? Nah, I say he's moved on...picked another city to mess with."

Between the two men, Leila remained quiet, thinking. She had to agree with Matt to a certain extent but what Jay was saying made sense as well. It was beyond stupid to even begin trying to understand the way the Joker's mind and logic worked, so she remained out of the conversation and instead addressed Phil, the leader of the other team of paramedics, as he hopped down from the cabin of the ambulance.

"Hey," she greeted him, glancing down at his uniform as a gleam of something liquid caught the sunlight against the black material. Waving one hand, she motioned at the slowly drying blood stain. "Rough morning?"

"You have _no _idea," Phil answered, talking over his shoulder as he stripped off his ruined uniform shirt and dropped it into a biohazardous waste bag, leaving him in just a plain white tank top. "Had a heart attack at 7:30, a bout of dehydration about fifteen minutes after that, then a _huge _car wreck just now. Fuckin' guy in a Cadillac-" Phil paused to let his two hands smack together loudly in front of him. "-went smashing into a building down on Fletcher. Cops think the brake lines were cut...thinkin' it's foul-play."

"He survive?" Jay asked. Phil shrugged, glancing down at his white tank top to find that the blood had soaked through and made a reddish brown stain along his stomach.

"He's in critical over at GMH," he answered in a nonchalant sort of tone that Leila hoped to never acquire, no matter how long she'd been working. "But he was tachycardic and in shock on the way over there, so who knows." Again he paused, to carefully peel off his tainted tank top and toss it into the bag along with his uniform shirt. "All's I know is, if you have a night like our morning, you're in for a rough one."

As Leila could have guessed, Phil was not psychic and their evening shift remained relatively quiet, beyond the usual, elderly slip and fall routine and one minor car accident. The team even found time between calls to eat at their favorite downtown diner, before returning to the firehouse at the end of their shift. To Leila's surprise, neither Matt nor Jay mentioned the Joker again that night, for which she was immensely thankful. The lack of conversation on that topic was helping to keep her mind off of it and further that route of carelessness she had already set out for herself.

The following evening however, would not prove to be as uneventful, as the team quickly discovered upon arriving to the firehouse to begin their evening shift. Leila and Matt had just finished pushing the stretcher back into the ambulance after the last team cleaned it, when Jay came rushing out, clipping the radio to the pocket of his black cargo pants.

"Got a stabbing over on Cleveland," he announced, pulling open the door to the driver's seat of the ambulance. All at once, the lights and sirens came on, the sound magnified by the tall structure of the bay, causing Leila's ears to ring as she climbed in behind Matt and slammed the back doors shut. Taking a seat on the bench, her body lurched to the side when the ambulance began moving and she looked up just in time to catch a pair of blue latex gloves as Matt threw them to her.

"I'm surprised we haven't had more of these over the past few days," he commented loudly over the sound of the sirens overhead. Leila's eyebrows arched as she looked up from sliding the gloves onto her hands.

"Gloves?" she asked jokingly with a laugh as she flexed her fingers to rid the latex of any pockets of trapped air. Across from her, Matt rolled his eyes.

"Stabbings," he corrected. "Seeing how the Jo-" At this, Leila cut in, shaking her head as she leaned to the side to pull open a compartment and begin laying a large, blue tarp of sterile paper over the stretcher.

"We've had dozens of gunshot and stabbing victims in the past," she reminded him, smoothing out wrinkles in the paper and beginning to layer towels over it. "The chances of this being related to the Joker are slim to none, Matt. I think Jay's right. I think he's moved to a different city by now. This is probably just some fight gone wrong." Leila paused to wonder privately if she truly agreed with Jay, or if she was simply grasping at wishful thinking.

In the jump seat, Matt remained silent, though from the way his lips had pursed tightly across his teeth and his eyebrows raised, it could not have been plainer that he wholeheartedly disagreed with her. Luckily, Leila was spared the opportunity to comment further as the ambulance came to a grinding, sudden stop and without hesitation, she leaned forward to open the doors and climb out with Matt right on her heels.

Two police cars, their red, white and blue lights flashing, were the first things they saw as the darkened street was revealed to them. The officers belonging to the vehicles were found over on the sidewalk, kneeling on either side of a man, laying on the ground, moaning and writhing with his bloody hands clamped over the left side of his abdomen. Leila rushed over while Matt remained behind, to assist Jay in pulling the stretcher out.

"What's going on?" she asked one of the officers as she knelt between them, placing her own gloved hand atop the victim's tight grip on his wound. Before either of the policemen could answer, the man on the ground, who she noticed reeked strongly of booze and body odor, suddenly cried out.

"HE FUCKING STABBED ME!" he shouted, moving his hands away from the wound so Leila could see the area he had been clutching. "SNUCK UP BEHIND ME AND FUCKIN-"

"SIR," Leila said loudly over his voice, fighting with both hands to grip the man's wrists and prevent him from causing more harm to himself by grabbing his deep injury. "We're taking you to the hospital, okay? But I need- SIR-" Her words were drowned out by another shout of pain and desperately, she glanced over her shoulder, where she found Matt and Jay wheeling the stretcher toward her and preparing the sturdy plastic plank on which they could lift him. It seemed useless to try and explain to the homeless man that they were attempting to help him so Leila stayed quiet and instead motioned to the police officers to back up so she and Matt could place the body support on the ground beside the victim.

"One, two-" Matt grunted on the count of three and in one swift movement, they had moved the man onto the support before lifting it from the ground and laying it carefully atop the stretcher. Leila turned to the officers as Matt and Jay began wheeling the howling man over to the ambulance.

"Do one of you guys want to ride along, in case he says who stabbed him?" she asked, motioning over her shoulder with a bloody, gloved thumb. "If he keeps up like this, we'll have to sedate him and he might not remember when he comes around." The officers exchanged quick looks as if playing a game of 'not it', before the young black policeman nodded.

"Yeah, I'll come," he said and immediately followed Leila over to the back of the ambulance, where Matt and Jay were securing the wheels of the stretcher. The officer cringed as the victim's shouts reached a new level of hysteria. "Is he gonna make it?" he asked, pausing for Leila to climb in ahead of him so he could follow. She nodded distractedly.

"He should, but he's losing a lot of blood by panicking like this," she answered loudly, taking a seat on the victim's left, injured side, while Jay climbed down and slammed the doors shut, closing them all in and magnifying the shouting. "SIR!" she yelled. "I need you to try and relax, okay?!" The man's eyes bulged out of his head as he looked over at her, writhing and twisting against his restraints.

"RELAX!" he screamed. "That maniac stabbed me and you want me to relax!"

"Who stabbed you?" the officer cut in, leaning forward as Leila struggled to get a pair of scissors close enough to the thrashing man to cut his tattered, bloody clothing away from the stab wound. "Can you remember what he looks like?" Leila gritted her teeth in frustration as the homeless man's back arched off of the stretcher and he howled in pain again.

"Get him away from me!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "He's trying to kill me!"

"You're safe now!" Matt's voice joined the din, his hands reaching over across Leila's to press a thick blue towel against the oozing wound. "We're taking you to the hospital! No one can get you th-"

"GET HIM! HE'S GONNA KILL ME!"

It seemed the man was now pushing himself into a psychotic break, his heart rate spiking dangerously high as he thrashed against the restraints holding him to the stretcher. Leila reached over Matt's head as he struggled to hold more towels against the bloody hole in the man's side, stretching her fingers for the box of clean syringes, where she gripped one and pulled it down. Matt glanced over his shoulder quickly as she reached behind him, opening another compartment to reveal an array of tiny, glass medicine bottles.

"Hurry," he murmured, having obviously realized what she was doing.

Beside them, the officer finally gave up his attempts at professionalism and shouted over the man, "WHO STABBED YOU?!". Leila succeeded in pulling enough of the sedative into the syringe and was in the process of leaning forward to roll up the filthy sleeve on the victim's arm when his raspy, strained voice cried out again.

"THE JOKER!"

Silence fell through the ambulance as Matt, Leila and the officer all went still. She could feel Matt turn his head to look at her, but she ignored both this and the instant sinking feeling she felt, instead reaching out again to prick the man's raised vein with the needle, before pushing the plunger on the syringe to inject the sedative. The effect was almost instantaneous.

The man's shouting subsided, his body gradually stilled, until his eyes closed halfway and he lay limp along the stretcher, giving Leila the opportunity to cut away his shirt with the scissors. She was still adamantly avoiding Matt's eyes as she could practically hear him gloating inside his head. Thankfully, the officer was the first to speak as he leaned away from the paramedics, allowing them room to begin attempting to staunch the flow of blood. He let out a nervous laugh.

"He's crazy, right? I mean...why would the Joker stab some homeless g-"

At that moment, the ambulance came to a sudden halt and within seconds, the back doors were being pulled open, revealing a group of nurses and one emergency room physician, all waiting to receive their patient. Leila was the first to jump down, forcefully ignoring the police officer's words as she reached out to begin unlocking the wheels of the stretcher. She spoke to the doctor first.

"Male stabbing victim, missed the Splenic artery, possible schizophrenic, pushed 2 milligrams Lorazepam," she explained, pushing the head of the stretcher toward the sliding doors leading into the hospital, surrounded by the team of nurses.

"Was he lucid when you picked him up?" the physician asked, pausing once they had reached the interior of the emergency room hallway. Leila nodded, watching as the nurses quickly transferred the patient to one of the hospital's own stretchers.

"Somewhat," she answered. "But once we got him in the ambulance, he had a break. Could be trauma induced delirium, but the way he relived the stabbing directly afterward makes me think schizophrenia. Either way, he'll have to be sedated until he can tell you if he was on any anti-psychotics."

"Alright, thanks."

With that, the doctor went sprinting after his newest patient, leaving Leila to take a deep, steadying breath, and begin walking back toward the exit, pulling the ambulance's bloodied stretcher along behind her. As she approached, she could see Matt and Jay through the glass doors, standing at the back of the ambulance, seemingly waiting for her, and she gritted her teeth together tightly in the back of her mouth. She just knew Matt was about to come at her with a hasty 'I told you so'. Hopefully, Jay would have enough sense to agree with her.

"Don't even start, Matt," she said the moment she stepped outside, holding up one hand to stop him. "That guy-"

"I _told _you!" he interrupted, tossing his hands out to either side of him in exasperation. "I _told _you he was still around!"

"That guy was nuts, Matt!" Leila practically shouted, the doubt she felt in her own words causing her to be more defensive than usual. "You know how many crazy homeless people have probably called the police over the past _month _claiming to have been mugged or attacked by the Joker? Or even Batman?"

"And that stab wound was just pretend?" Matt asked, his voice raising ominously to match Leila's. "That guy just _happened _to know exactly where to stab himself to miss the splenic artery? That was a _professional _stab-"

"Just what would the Joker, the most wanted man in the _country, _stand to gain from stabbing some poor, homeless person, huh?" she spat back at him, moving between Matt and Jay to climb into the back of the ambulance and begin throwing the blood stained towels and paper into the hazardous waste bin. When Matt didn't immediately answer, Leila looked up, raising her eyebrows in expectation. However, it was Jay that spoke first.

"Guys..." Leila's eyes snapped in his direction, glaring heatedly at him as though daring him to take Matt's side. "It doesn't matter _who _stabbed that guy. We got him here. He's gonna live. That should be enough." He paused, turning to Matt, and he pointed one finger at him. _"Stop _freaking out. If the Joker wanted anything to do with Leila, he'd have already done it. _Drop it." _Jay turned to Leila, moving his pointed finger in her direction as he raised his eyebrows. "Stop being all defensive. If Matt wants to be a paranoid princess, just play along."

Finally, the tension was broken and Leila laughed, shaking her head as Matt frowned deeply at Jay. Before any further comment could be made however, the radio clipped to Jay's pants gave a soft crackling of static and another cool female voice broke through.

"Fourteen year old female, possible Grand Mal seizure, located at one-three-eight-seven Claxonburg Avenue."

At these words, Leila, Matt and Jay all groaned in unison. Seizures were one thing, but a fourteen year old girl having one rarely turned out to be attributed to something minor. Jay reached down, unclipping the radio to press the side button and speak into it.

"EMS team seven-eight-eight-nine en route to one-three-eight-seven Claxonburg Avenue," he said quickly, before returning the radio to its usual place and glancing up at Leila and Matt in the back of the ambulance. "Looks like it's gonna be a long night, so if you two could just hold off on punching each other until we get off, that would be great," he told them, flashing a teasing grin and disappearing from sight, leaving Leila to look over at Matt as she stripped off her dirty gloves. To her surprise, he spoke first.

"Alright, so I guess I am being a little paranoid about this whole Joker thing, but..." he paused, shrugging sheepishly as he pulled a fresh pair of gloves onto his hands. "...I dunno. I just worry about you." His sentence ended rather abruptly, and Leila was almost completely certain that was not what he had originally intended to conclude with. Instead of commenting on this, she laughed, shaking her head.

"You're so lame, Matt..." she grumbled, grinning when she noticed his cheeks start to blush, as he attempted to look at everything in the ambulance besides her face.

"Shut up..."

By the time eleven o'clock managed to roll around, and the shift was finally at its end, the team was more than ready to call it a night. Call after call had come in through the radio, keeping them so busy that the key to the ambulance had not come out of the ignition one time since it had been started eight hours earlier. As Leila hopped down from the back cabin, she groaned when her tired, aching feet made harsh contact with the concrete floor of the brightly lit docking bay. Matt followed suit, hastily unbuttoning the front of his damp, sweaty uniform shirt with a weary sigh.

"Phew, what a night," Jay commented, joining them at the back of the ambulance to clean down the stretcher in preparation for the night crew. "Gotta say, I'm glad it's over."

Matt nodded his agreement, unrolling several paper towels before handing the rest of the roll to Leila. "God, me too," he answered, catching a bottle of disinfectant as Leila tossed it to him. "I can't wait to just sit on my couch with an ice cold-" he went on, but never did get to say exactly what he was looking forward to as a loud voice called out to them from the huge, open sliding doors of the bay. Looking up, Leila saw that Phil was approaching them, wearing a very smug look on his face. She knelt down below the stretcher to wipe the legs and allow herself a heavy roll of her eyes; Phil was not one of her favorite people.

"Have a nice night, kiddies?" he asked loudly, leaning sideways against the ambulance with his wrinkled uniform shirt draped over his shoulder and a lit cigarette bouncing between his lips as he spoke. Matt shook his head, lobbing a dirty ball of damp paper towels into the trashcan on Leila's right.

"Not really," he answered somewhat hotly, casting a sideways look at Leila, who met his eyes halfway. It seemed he was not Phil's biggest fan either. She pursed her lips to keep from grinning, while Jay turned to hand over the radio and keys.

"We had a stabbing earlier at about six, then a fourteen year old girl having a Grand mal, then an old guy who broke his hip, then-" Jay cut himself off, taking a deep breath and rolling his eyes. "Yeah, it was a crazy night."

With the stretcher finally clean and pushed back into the ambulance, Leila and Matt joined the small, growing crowd near the front of the truck, where the rest of Phil's team had arrived and congregated. She caught only a few words of Phil's sentence as she stepped up between Jay and Matt.

"-barkin' and goin' on about how the _Joker _caused it," he finished with a derisive laugh and a glance at the young paramedic on his left. "I told him, it's _really _unlikely that the _Joker _would really wanna waste his time scaring some old fart to death, ya know what I mean? Like that dude's heart attack couldn't have been caused by him weighing about four-hundred pounds, right?"

More laughter erupted from the other team of medics, though Leila, Matt and Jay did not join them. Matt and Jay were looking at each other while Leila fought to keep her eyes on Phil, struggling to ignore the sick feeling that had just settled into her stomach. Someone _else _claimed to have seen the Joker? Her curiosity and intense desire to write this off as another crazy person's ramblings caused her to speak up, over the peals of laughter.

"Was that guy really crazy, or..." she began, giving a dismissive shrug. "I mean he probably just imagined it, right? Hallucinated, maybe?" Across from her, Phil and his colleague exchanged glances before they both shook their heads.

"Nah, I don't think so," Phil answered. "He seemed totally sane. Started gettin' real mad when I asked him if he was supposed to be on any psych meds. Said there was no way he imagined him."

At this, Leila remained silent, swallowing hard on the newly formed lump in her throat, while Matt nodded, folding his arms across his white t-shirt. "Our stabbing victim said the same thing..." he murmured. "...Said the Joker came up behind him and stabbed him. Got him about an inch below the splenic artery, but-"

"He was schizophrenic," Leila cut in abruptly, shaking her head. "He was having an episode, that's all. I mean-"

"Exactly," Phil took his turn to interrupt her and gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "I mean, seriously, why would the Joker be running around stabbing random bums and giving fatties heart attacks?" These words brought about another round of laughter from his team, which Leila reluctantly joined, purely out of relief that someone else agreed with her.

"If anything, it's a copy-cat," Jay said, once the laughing had died down again. "It's probably just some pathetic guy wearing paint and trying to catch some of the real Joker's publicity."

As the teams went their separate ways, seemed Jay's explanation was good enough for everyone but Matt, though Leila did not care what he thought, nor did she give him any time to voice his opinion before she took her leave through the firehouse door. She was dead tired and all she wanted at that point in time was to get home, where she could slide into a hot bath with a glass of wine, without so much as a single thought of stabbings or escaped psychopaths. Jay had been right. If the Joker wanted something to do with her, though she was absolutely positive he did not, he would have done it by then, and she would have already been lying in a ditch somewhere. _At least I wouldn't have to worry about bills anymore, _she thought with a short laugh, casting one half-glance into her rear view mirror. The back seat was empty, just as she knew it would be.

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A/N: I PROMISE! THIS IS THE LAST CHAPTER BEFORE THE FUN BEGINS! This chapter and the next were originally meant to go together but it got too long and would have taken you several hours to read it. So I split them up! Have no fear, the next chapter is already in the works and should be out in a timely manner. = ] I hope you enjoyed this one as it was admittedly pretty fun to write. Thanks so much to those who have favorited and reviewed this story so far! It is really encouraging to know that so many people are liking it thus far! Stay tuned for the next installment! -QoM


	5. At Last

Leila's foot shifted from the brake to the gas pedal, letting her eyes roll to the top of her head as she held her phone against her ear. It was the same spiel she had heard dozens of times before, over the past year.

"Yes, Miss. Hawkin, we're just calling to remind you that your next payment is due on the twenty-fourth of this month, in the amount of four-hundred and seventeen dollars," said the cool voice on the other end of the call. "If you'd like to pay that now, I can do that for you over the phone."

Struggling to keep her voice level and her teeth from gnashing together in the back of her mouth, Leila took a deep breath in. "No, I..." she paused, scrambling to come up with some other, less embarrassing way of saying 'I'm broke'. "...I don't have time to do that right now, but I'm planning to make that payment on the first." There was a pause on the other end of the call, where Leila could hear the distant sound of long, fake nails tapping a keyboard.

"Alright, Miss. Hawkin, that's fine," replied the woman. "I just have to remind you that there will be a late fee of thirty-two dollars, which will be due at the time of the payment, okay?"

By the time the wheels of Leila's car bounced into the parking lot of firehouse 14, she was in ripe mood, nearly splitting the seam of her messenger bag as she yanked it from the passenger seat beside her, only to find that the strap had been shut in the door. With an irritated groan, she yanked hard on the material until it finally came free. Slipping the bag over her shoulder, she got out and walked quickly toward the building, where she could see Matt and Jay moving about under the bright lights of the ambulance bay. The sun had just set, leaving the sky above Gotham a fiery, gradually darkening pink. Matt looked up, having heard her approach, a frown wrinkling his forehead.

"Who pissed in _your _corn flakes?" he asked, upon noticing the sour, 'not in the mood' look on her face. From inside the ambulance, Leila heard Jay give a loud 'tut'.

"And you wonder why you have trouble keeping a girlfriend..." he grumbled at Matt, leaving Leila the perfect opportunity to walk past the boys without giving an answer, and enter the firehouse to put her bag in a locker. Over her shoulder, she heard Matt's voice as the door closed behind her.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

After stuffing her bag into a locker and donning her uniform shirt, Leila stepped back outside, tying her increasingly unruly hair into a ponytail. Much to her relief, the conversation between the guys was still going; her co-workers did not know how dire her financial situation was getting and she planned to keep it that way.

"You're insensitive!" Jay was explaining. "You should have asked her politely, 'What's wrong, Leila?'. No, you come out with, 'Who pissed in your corn flakes, bro?'. Damn, dude..."

When Matt's mouth opened quickly to shoot back a defensive answer, Leila finally stepped in, forcing a smile onto her face as she climbed up into the back of the ambulance.

"I'm fine, guys," she assured them, rolling her eyes when Matt tossed a hand, looking to Jay with his eyebrows raised as if to ask, '_see?'. _"I was off in la-la-land. Must have just had a weird look on my face." She forced a laugh, hoping they would buy her story and not push her for further information. Across from her, Jay had just looked up from where he was stuffing a new box of gloves into a compartment, when the radio on his pocket gave a crackle. He groaned.

"God, I hope we don't have another night like we had last-"

"Building fire at Lanbrook apartments, on West and twenty-fifth," came the calm, male voice of the dispatcher. "All units report immediately. Building fire at Lan-"

As the voice on the radio began repeating the information, Leila, Matt and Jay all sighed in unison; smoke inhalation and burn victims were not the easiest way to start a long, eight hour shift. Jay clipped the radio back to his pocket before hopping down from the ambulance, to let Matt climb in and take his seat along the bench in front of the small window, while Leila sat in the jump seat. And as usual, within moments, the ambulance was moving, the sirens screaming to life atop it, the lights bouncing, reflecting against the windows of the passing buildings.

With her hands flexing within the confines of the blue latex, squeezing the air out, Leila glanced over to Matt, who had pulled a small book out from under the bench, and was frowning down at it in obvious confusion, his upper body swaying slightly with the movement of the truck as Jay took a sharp left turn. His gloved finger reached out, tracing something along the page, which prompted Leila to lean forward, stretching her neck to see what he was studying. A small map lay open across his legs.

"What are you-" she began to ask, but Matt interrupted, clearly having realized something. He looked up, his confused frown deepening.

"West and twenty-fifth is literally right on the line where our district ends and fifteen's begins," he stated, staring over at Leila. A rather pregnant pause followed his words, giving her a moment to wonder if this fact was supposed to be significant. When he did not immediately continue, she shrugged.

"So?"

"So why are we being called to it?" he asked. "Wouldn't it be House 15's call?"

At this, Leila shrugged again, leaning down to pull an oxygen tank out from a stowaway compartment, along with a bag of disposable breathing masks. "It's an apartment building fire," she answered. "They probably need both of us out there. I wouldn't be surprised if other teams show up too."

From Matt's silence, he seemed to understand what she was saying, but from the half-frown clinging to his face, it certainly appeared as though he was still thinking the situation through. Leila withheld a groan of annoyance at this. Why did it matter? This was their job and if they had been called out to a scene, they were to go, no matter what district it belonged to. Part of her really wanted to remind him of this, but the other, larger part of her was just happy that he had finally dropped the nonsense about the Joker. So she let it go and instead, pulled the heavy bag of equipment toward her, in preparation to get out once the ambulance came to a stop.

As the doors to the truck swung outward into the night, the heat from the blazing apartment building was instantly tangible, mingling with the humid summer air and rushing into the cool, air conditioned cabin of the ambulance. Leila and Matt wasted no time in climbing down, and were joined shortly by Jay, who they soon saw was accompanied by a fireman from their own district. His sooty, faded yellow helmet was tucked under his arm as he pointed at the building across the street, where upon glancing up, Leila could see great flames licking the brick, spilling from the broken windows. The fireman's voice was hoarse and strained as he spoke loudly over the sound of approaching sirens and shouting.

"I've got a team inside the building now, searching for residents but we've done a head count against the manager's list of tenants and we think we got everyone out," he explained. "The team from fifteen already took a few people with burns over to GMH, but I've got more. Standby."

As the fire captain ran off toward a nearby group of huddled residents, Leila set the bag of equipment down on the floor of the ambulance, opening it quickly to search for bandages and burn ointment, while Matt jumped up into the cabin to wheel forward the tank of oxygen. He was attaching a long plastic tube to a mask when he spoke, hopping down backwards onto the pavement beside her.

"Something about this seems off to me..." he commented, glancing over his shoulder as if expecting to find someone there eavesdropping. Leila remained silent. "I mean...a blaze this bad, _right _on the border between our district and-" At these words, she finally opened her mouth to interrupt, but was cut short when the fireman reappeared, an older man at his side.

"Guys, he's got a pretty bad burn on the palm of his hand here," he informed them, ushering the victim forward. Leila and Matt glanced down at his hand, but did not let their gazes linger there long when the man gave a deep, hacking cough. Leila reached out with a comforting smile as she guided him to the step of the ambulance, and she was about to request that he send the other victims over when the fireman suddenly let out a groan. "Oh, great. The fire marshall is here..." he grumbled, but Leila was no longer listening and had instead turned her attention fully to the man seated on the step of the ambulance.

"Are you burned anywhere else?" she asked him, leaning down slightly to gaze into his face, where soot and sweat had mixed to form a black grime along his temples. He shook his head, holding out his hand with his palm facing upward, giving another rattling, dry cough.

"No, I-" he began, but glanced down to accept the oxygen mask from Matt with his uninjured hand. "I heard the alarms going off, so I ran to the stairwell, but-" Again, the man paused, to bring the mask toward his face, to take a deep breath of the flow of oxygen. He exhaled slowly, in an effort to prevent himself from coughing again. "When I reached out for the handle, it was so hot that-" His hand was trembling as he extended it, revealing a long, horizontal burn mark across his palm, where the skin had already begun to blister. Leila held back a hiss of pity as she gently unfolded his fingers to flatten his hand.

"I'm going to clean this with some peroxide," she explained, motioning from the mask to his face. "You keep taking deep breaths." As the man obeyed her, placing the oxygen over his nose and mouth with his free hand, Leila reached into the bag of equipment for the squeeze bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a stack of gauze pads. She held up both items so he could see them. "This might sting a bit, but if it gets too much, just let me know and I'll stop." The man nodded, closing his eyes wearily as he breathed deeply and evenly.

Leila was squeezing a thin stream of peroxide onto the gauze when Matt suddenly appeared at her side, his hand placed gently on the shoulder of a woman as he guided her to sit on the step beside their burn victim. He locked eyes with Leila for a split second before returning his attention to the trembling woman when she let out a horrible cough, just like the one the man seated next to her had given. Matt wasted no time in hooking up another mask to the regulator, slipping the strap gently around the back of her head.

"Can you tell me what happened?" he asked her in reference to the small cuts on her face, but Leila tuned their voices out, focusing her eyes on the palm of her victim's hand, where she dabbed the pad against his blistered skin.

It seemed that the man was either too exhausted to react or could not feel the vague stinging of the peroxide beneath the pain of his burn as he remained mostly stationary, keeping his hand extended for Leila to treat his wound. Her fingers were light, barely touching him as she dabbed burn cream along the inflamed area, though as she did this, the woman seated in front of Matt spoke, reaching up to pull the oxygen mask away from her nose and mouth. Her head turned toward the burn victim, attempting to see him around Matt's arm as he applied strips of sterile bandages to the cuts on her forehead.

"Did you hear what they were saying, Ross?" she asked him, giving a short cough. Leila wondered if these two people had been neighbors before their homes were destroyed. The burn victim, who she now knew as 'Ross', shook his head, pulling his own mask away from his face.

"No," he answered hoarsely. "What are they-"

"I heard one of the firemen talking about how they think it's arson," the woman said. Leila felt Matt glance over at her, but she ignored him, keeping her eyes trained on the white bandages she was currently wrapping around Ross' hand. "They don't know for sure yet but they said the blaze was so hot and started so quickly..." Her words faltered as a few tears managed to well up in her reddened eyes. "They think it was started purposely."

Leila could not ignore the pang of heartache she felt for these poor people, how sorry she felt about the loss of their possessions, though she could not let her actions or facial expressions reveal this. She was there to do a job and felt that it was her duty to remain stoic and helpful, but kind and patient. Ross' hand had been successfully bandaged, so Leila took a half-step back, leaning down slightly to make eye contact with him. His eyes had become watery, swimming with unstoppable tears, but Leila looked past these forcefully to put a gentle smile on her face.

"I've got your hand clean and dressed, but I want to advise you to go to the hospital to be checked out by a doctor, to be sure there won't be any lasting damage from the smoke," she informed him, nodding her head downward toward his chest and allowing her smile to expand encouragingly when she noticed his eyes widen slightly in apprehension. "Though if you're breathing well on your own right now, which you are, I think you'll be fine. Just make sure to see a doctor so they can double check, alright?"

Ross nodded, pulling the oxygen mask away from his face as he lowered his head to look at his bandaged hand, the gravity of his movement causing those gathered tears to spill over and down his grimy, streaked cheeks. Unable to help herself, Leila reached out to place her hand on his shoulder, listening as he cleared his throat and shook his head, clearly uncomfortable with crying in front of a woman he'd never met before.

"Um..." he hesitated, his voice croaking slightly in the effort of hiding his tears. "Wh-where am I supposed to...go? My apartment-"

Here, Leila cut in, to spare the poor man the embarrassment of struggling to find words to describe his devastating situation. She smiled warmly, hoping the expression was making its way to her eyes and reading through them in the most genuine way possible.

"Go get a hotel room tonight," she told him in the kindest, most sincere voice possible. "The city will see about getting you relocated until the whole mess is sorted out, but for tonight...go get yourself a suite. Order room service and relax," Finally a watery, somewhat broken smile reached Ross' face, and he nodded, standing up from the step of the ambulance. But before he could walk away, Leila raised her eyebrows and pointed her gloved finger at him in a mockingly stern sort of way. "But I'm serious about that doctor. Go to the hospital first thing in the morning, understand?"

Over the next several hours, the team managed to treat the remaining victims to the best of their abilities, urging them to go to the hospital, but otherwise releasing them, seeing how none of their injuries went beyond small burns, cuts and coughing from the smoke. It seemed the first team to arrive, the EMS team from Firehouse 15, had already carted off the more severe burn victims, which left Leila and the two guys with nothing they could not handle on their own. The apartment building across the street now stood as a smoldering wreckage, dripping, hissing and steaming as the last of the flames were doused and the fire trucks began to disperse one by one. Leila could not keep her eyes from gazing sadly over at the dwindling huddle of newly homeless residents, and she jumped, startled from her dazed stare as Jay appeared next to her.

"They'll be alright," he assured her in his permanently calm, even voice. "The fire marshall is putting them up in a hotel for the night until arrangements can be made at another building. He said the investigation will start first thing tomorrow, once they're sure it's safe to go in." Leila nodded somewhat distractedly, pushing a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear.

"Good, that's...good," she answered, taking a deep breath and turning to look up at him.

"Where are we headed now? Are they done with us?" she then asked, glancing to her right when Matt rounded the corner of the ambulance, stripping off his gloves as he approached.

"Yeah, they said we're done," Jay lifted his right arm to glance at his watch. "It's already almost ten. I figure we could run over and get a cup of coffee?" he asked rather hopefully, his eyes darting between Leila and Matt, who both shrugged. "Haven't gotten another call yet so we could just wait it out, try to ride the clock until midnight."

The vote for coffee was unanimous, so after double checking that their services were no longer required, the team loaded up the gear and departed, leaving the scene of the fire behind them.

It came as no surprise that the inside of the Starbucks coffee shop was bustling and crawling with people, despite there only being one hour left before closing time. The outdoor patio on the corner of the block was nearly overrun with loud teenagers, laughing, enjoying their sugary, highly caffeinated coffee drinks, leaving a huge mess in their wake. Leila spared them a somewhat annoyed scowl from the corner of her eye as she walked past, struggling to remember Matt's complicated coffee order.

The door leading into the shop opened, held that way by an older man. Leila slipped past him as he exited, muttering a barely audible 'thank you' as she squeezed her way past several people crowding the small bar, all struggling to put cream and sugars into their coffee. With her eyes trained on the registers, Leila stopped at the back of line, where two young women stood in front of her, staring up at the menu board and conversing in low voices. Matt's order was leaking steadily from her brain so she tried to tune the girls out, to focus on remembering what he had asked her to order.

"S_mall...no, grande...is that medium? Mocha with...wait, he wanted it cold, right?"_

"Yeah, mom called me earlier...asking about everything that's been going on," one of the women was saying to her companion. Leila folded her arms, taking a step forward as the line decreased by one.

"_He did want it cold...so a medium mocha with...skim milk-"_

"Everything that's been going on?" the girl's friend repeated in question form, turning quickly to glance behind her. Upon seeing that it was only some random paramedic who was most certainly _not _listening, she continued, shifting her gaze onto the side of her friend's head. "You mean with the Joker-" Leila's internal mantra of Matt's order ceased immediately, her attention honing in on the hushed conversation in front of her as though it had been drawn there by force. The blonde of the two girls rolled her eyes.

"Yeah," she answered. "She asked me if I wanted to move back home...She doesn't think it's safe for me here."

Leila struggled not to let out a snort. Honestly, what were the chances of this _one _girl being in serious danger from the Joker? He hadn't been seen or even heard from in over a week. It really seemed as though Jay had been right in thinking the maniac had moved on and she figured it was only a matter of time before Gotham got word of an attack on another city...Perhaps New York or Chicago or...

Finally, with the two girls moving on down the counter to wait for their drinks, it was Leila's turn to order. She stepped up to the register, glancing up at the menu board out of habit, while the barista in front of her stood there with her eyebrows raised in impatient anticipation. Leila let out a rather nervous laugh as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

"Um...Can I have a med- I mean _grande _mocha with...uh-"

"It's skim right?" Matt asked, reaching out for his cold drink as Leila passed it to him a few minutes later, handing him a green straw along with it. She nodded, taking a sip of her own iced coffee while Jay laughed, staring down at Matt's chocolate drink with a disapproving eye.

"That's such a girly drink," he told him. Leila grunted an appreciative laugh at Jay's barb, but did not catch the response from Matt as her eyes followed the two girls onto the patio across the sidewalk. She could not help but wonder if they were still talking about the Joker, what they were saying if that was indeed the topic of their conversation. The tip of her green straw dug into her bottom lip as she absentmindedly rested it there, letting a vague, dismissive snort pass through her nose. Those girls were silly, she thought. That girl's _mother _was downright stupid to think her daughter should move back, after all, the Joker did not know _her _name...He did not know where she _worked, _what she looked like, or even cared that she existed. Leila on the other hand...

No, she told herself for the one thousandth time that week. Yes, he might have known her name but what difference did that make? It was the same argument from days past and she could not bear to think through it again. Mercifully, Matt had obviously heeded Jay's warning and had been careful not to mention the name of the Joker in her presence, for which she had been immensely thankful. However, that left her with an awful lot of quiet time to do one of two things- either psych herself up or talk herself down. Luckily, she had gotten exceptionally good at settling herself down from these paranoid ideas about the Joker hunting for her and was starting to push the thought entirely from her mind. Just another day or two more, without a single mention of the terrorist on the news and she should be past it completely.

"I get nonfat milk 'cause I don't wanna end up like _you, _Tubby," Matt's voice pulled Leila's attention from the girls on the patio, to the ambulance, where Jay was jumping down from his seat on the passenger side of the cab, to pat his flat stomach proudly.

"You better _hope _you end up like me at forty years old," he answered with a smirk. "I'm the picture of middle-aged health, so-"

At that moment, a soft crackle came from the pocket of Jay's black pants before all three paramedics glanced at their watches simultaneously. '_10:47', _barely over an hour before their shift was set to end.Leila sighed while Matt groaned and Jay pulled the radio out, holding it up so the team could listen to the quiet voice of the dispatcher.

"Possible suicide attempt on 17th and Westfall avenue, priority two, code three-"

Jay sighed, tossing his almost empty coffee cup into the trashcan on the curb while Leila and Matt leaned into the cab to set their own drinks in the cup holders. As they walked to the back to climb inside, Leila shook her head rather gravely.

"Just figures we would be _so _close to being done, then get called to one of these," she said, her mind reflecting to only a few months ago when they had been called to a similar situation. A young man had attempted to hang himself in his parents garage but had only managed to dislocate a vertebrae. That same young man was now confined to a wheelchair permanently, paralyzed from the neck down. Matt nodded his agreement, slamming the doors shut to take his usual seat.

"I hope this guy isn't as young as Jake," he murmured, his voice barely audible beneath the scream of the sirens. Leila looked over at him, studying the side of his face for a moment, remembering how affected Matt had been by that call, how he had gone back to the hospital the next day to check on the teenager. At the time, she had wondered why that particular instance had moved him so much, but after a while, she came to realize that it did not matter. When it came down to it, Matt was a good guy and the fact that he still had the ability to feel deep sympathy for their patients was one of the things Leila liked about him. She remained quiet for the time being and instead spent the ride to the scene preparing the large bag of supplies.

It was not long before the ambulance was coming to a stop, and as usual, Leila and Matt were the first to get out, their eyes greeted by the flashing lights from two police cars. The vehicles had formed something of a makeshift barrier from the rest of the street, where a small crowd of onlookers had started to gather on the opposite sidewalk. One of the officers approached, but Leila's eyes were drawn to the victim a few yards away, laying sprawled on his back, his legs bent into unnatural positions, clearly broken. Her stomach clenched uncomfortably; there was something about the thought of falling from a great height that unnerved her more than just about any other circumstance.

"Glad you guys got here fast," the policeman was saying over his shoulder as he led Matt and Leila toward the man on the ground. There was a small card in his hand as he held it up to read from it. "John Markenson, lives up on the third floor in apartment 305. We think he jumped-"

Kneeling down at John's head, Leila pulled the penlight from the pocket of her uniform shirt and clicked it on, lifting the unconscious man's left eyelid to draw the line slowly across his pupil. A drop of hope seeped through her when the black circle dilated then retracted normally. Glancing up at the officer standing over her, she asked, "Has he been moved since you guys found him?"

"No, ma'am," he replied, shaking his head and taking a step back to allow Matt room to crouch next to the victim. "We left him how he is...afraid we might make somethin' worse if we touched him."

Leila nodded, thinking wildly to herself that it was good thing this officer had followed his training, as it was highly possible that this poor man had broken his back or neck, and both legs. If not done properly, moving him even the smallest amount could have killed him. At John's abdomen, Leila watched as Matt pressed gently with a flattened hand on the rather large mound of his stomach, while flicking the skin with his opposite hand. The chest piece of his stethoscope was pressed underneath his flat hand and Matt frowned in concentration, listening to the sound of his thumping. After a few moments, he removed the stethoscope from his ears, shaking his head.

"I don't hear any blood in the stomach or lungs, but-" Matt began to explain, but his next words were cut short when the victim, John, gave a sudden groan, his eyes flickering open.

"Wh-where..." he mumbled, his chest beginning to heave as the pain from his broken body seemed to set in. Leila leaned over his head, using both of her hands on either side of his face to keep it still and prevent him from doing more harm to himself by panicking.

"John? Can you hear me?" she asked, her voice raised slightly. The officer standing overhead walked away from them when his radio let off a burst of static but Leila ignored this, thankful that he had moved; waking up in great pain with a police officer standing over him might have given John a reason to struggle. The victim let out a helpless sort of whimper as he closed his eyes. Leila spoke again, in an effort to keep the man conscious. "John, can you hear me? I need you to keep your eyes open, alright?"

"He...He's still up there," John's voice was raspy and cracking. Leila glanced over at Matt, who looked up from his place at the victim's feet, his face mangled in a confused frown. The sound of wheels across asphalt told them that Jay was approaching with the stretcher, but she did not take her attention from where it was focused on the eyes of her patient.

"John, who's up there? Is someone hurt in your apartment?" she asked him calmly, shifting back from the man's head so Jay could move in, keeping her hands in place on either side of his face to hold him steady. His eyes started to drift shut again. "John, stay with me, okay?"

As Jay knelt at her side, Leila shook her head. "He said something about there being someone else upstairs in his apartment," she said, lifting her gaze to glance at Jay. He rose to his feet, reaching out to hook his hand beneath the straps of the large equipment bag.

"I'll go up," he said purposefully, but Leila was already standing, shaking her head.

"No, I'll go," she stepped in, nodding down at the heavyset, unconscious victim on the ground. "I think he broke his back and legs, so you'll have to help Matt lift him on the plank. I don't want to jostle him and risk paralysis." Jay nodded, reaching down to pull the radio out of his pocket and hand it, along with the bag of equipment, to Leila.

"Alright, call down if you need someone and I'll get the team from 15 out here," he told her. Leila nodded, turning her back on the scene to walk across the sidewalk and into the building, where the noise and flashing lights ceased at once. She blinked, glancing around at the inside of the lobby, suddenly feeling as though she had fallen deaf from the rapid change in environment. Taking a deep breath in through her nose, she moved swiftly toward a door to the right of the elevators, which opened inward to a long, tall set of stairs. She began to climb, taking them two at a time, her heart already racing as she imagined the carnage she was about to see.

Over her time as a paramedic, Leila had seen some rather gruesome things; rooms with blood spattered against the walls, massive pools of the thick, red substance in which a victim lay, already dead or rapidly approaching that state. She had seen both men and women with missing limbs, or eyeballs, half of their heads blown away. She had even been unfortunate enough to witness a man whose tongue had been cut out of his head. So with all of this experience under her belt, Leila felt as though she could handle whatever lay beyond the door to apartment 305.

At the third floor, she turned from the stairs and moved toward yet another door, opening it quickly to step out and glance both ways down the hall to either side of her. Going up the stairs had twisted her bearings, making it necessary for her to check the numbers on the doors of the apartments to decipher which way she would need to turn. To her right stood apartment 301, and on her left, apartment 302. She turned in the appropriate direction and began following the pattern in the musty carpet toward the end of the dimly lit hallway, struggling to ignore the way the hair on the back of her neck had just risen.

The building was hauntingly quiet, the only sound being that of her shoes along the floor and the clanking, jingling noise of the equipment bag bouncing against her leg. White doors slid past her as she walked, and her eyes followed each one, counting the numbers.

303...304...305...

At the door bearing the correct numbers, Leila stopped, turned to face it and glanced down at the knob, only for a frown to crease her forehead as she reached out for it. The door and frame were not completely touching, the deadbolt was not locked, but the apartment beyond seemed completely and totally silent. Leila's hand had frozen in midair, inches from the metal knob of the door and as she stared down at it, she watched as her fingers curled slowly inward toward her palm, as though her own body was reacting instinctively, negatively against this particular threshold. A moment later, an impatient snort escaped through her nose as she imagined Jay and Matt downstairs, awaiting her call on the radio to report whether or not help was needed upstairs. She forced her hand toward the door, pushing it open slowly, to take a half-step inside the short hallway, and then knock on the wood.

"Gotham City fire department," she called into the seemingly empty apartment.

No answer came. The hair all along her arms began to raise as her heart sank; perhaps she was too late. Perhaps John Markenson had already killed the person here before he had attempted to take his own life. Perhaps Leila was not about to find a living victim, but instead a dead body. From the way goosebumps had risen along her skin, it certainly seemed that way, as something malevolent hung through the air, a heavy, dense sensation that she only felt around a dead body. She urged herself further into the apartment, ignoring the kitchen to the right of the short hallway, to continue until she found herself standing in a small living room. Her feet stopped there as she glanced to her left, into a dark, empty bedroom. The bed was still made and undisturbed.

Her apprehension was becoming almost overwhelming as Leila's frown deepened, her gaze shifting over to the far wall of the living room, where two sheen curtains had been drawn across a large, floor to ceiling window, the flashing lights from three floors below somewhat visible through them. They were still, no breeze moving them, and curiously, she approached, her heart racing as she reached out to very gently shift one of the curtains away from the glass, parting the strips of material from one another. Her chest gave a sharp pang of surprise and slight dread; it was a sliding glass door, leading out onto a patio, and it was locked from the inside. It was most certainly impossible for the broken man on the pavement below to have done this.

That was when it hit her. The scent of gasoline, filth and a foul stench reminiscent of death came upon her. It seemed to steal the very breath from her lungs as it clouded her senses, raising the hair along her arms, chills slithering up her spine as though a cold hand had just grabbed the back of her neck. Her eyes had frozen on the glass pane less than a foot from her face, though her vision shifted, from looking _through_ the transparent surface, to staring _into _it, into the reflection of the once supposed empty room behind her. The door to the apartment had closed, silently, sometime over the past minute, and now, in front of it, stood the Joker.

He was like a grotesque statue, a remarkably solid ghost, his head lowered, his acid green hair spilling down and around his face in lank strands. The air was thick with his malice, the room seemed to throb with demonic energy and as Leila slowly turned to face him, her grip faltered, dropping the bag of equipment to the floor beside her. She felt dizzy, almost sick with dread as the Joker stood to his full height from leaning against the door, licking his crimson lips as he cocked his head to the side. A horrible smile formed a crack in his painted face.

"Hello there."

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A/N: Yes, yes, I know...I've left you with a horrible cliffhanger. BUT HAVE NO FEAR! The next chapter is coming soon! It will be well worth the wait, trust me... Leave me your love/hate if you really want the next chapter! -QoM


	6. The Beginning Is The End

"You..."

This was all Leila's brain could manage to force out of her mouth. Across from her, the Joker's head tilted to one side, his eyes squinted and his lips tightened in the opposite direction as he bit down on the inside of his cheek. One of his black gloved fingers pointed at her while he turned into the kitchen, disappearing momentarily from view until he reappeared through the breakfast bar.

"No, you," he countered, his clowny voice filling her with another, more palpable layer of dread. "You are one hard lady to get a hold of, ya know that?" The otherwise silent apartment was suddenly filled with bangs and clanking of silverware as the Joker yanked open different drawers throughout the kitchen, obviously looking for something. Leila watched him, remaining speechless, not necessarily by choice, but rather because she just could not believe that this horrific idea she had been trying to suppress for almost two weeks, had actually come true. All those nights, lying in bed, worrying, then talking herself down, assuring herself that nothing was going to happen, had been in vain. All the defensiveness against Matt and her father had been pointless. If only she had listened to them.

Abruptly, the terrorist's movement stopped, and his painted, ghostly face turned to glare back at her over his broad shoulder as he reached out to open a cabinet. His black eyes bounced up and down her figure once before he returned to his search of the kitchen.

"I'll admit, my first few..." He paused to wiggle a few fingers in the air beside him, searching for a word. "attempts, were a little hit or miss..." He turned again, this time fully to face her, and placed both of his hands on the counter, staring at her through the breakfast bar across the room. A horrid smile cracked his painted face. "But I figured it out. And now, here you are...and here I am."

Leila was hardly listening to his words as she gaped, open-mouthed at him from the other side of the apartment. Any moment now, he was going to launch himself at her, pull a knife or gun from a pocket, stab her, shoot her, cover her nose and mouth with a chloroform-soaked rag. She would wake up in some locked and windowless room, helpless, to be tortured, raped and played with, until eventually, she would die there at the hands of this man. It was truly all of her worst fears crammed into a simple, one bedroom apartment.

The Joker watched with narrowed, amused eyes, smirking at her as though he had been reading her mind, and vaguely, through the numb sense of panic flooding her brain, she somehow managed to register the radio clipped to the pocket of her pants. The police were only three stories below on the street, and in an instant, she could have them on their way upstairs to save her from this terror. But what were the chances that she could survive long enough for them to reach her? Surely the Joker would make some effort to prevent her from taking such an action and Leila could only imagine what that might entail. She had to try, regardless of the repercussions.

Without pausing or even taking a second to formulate a way to reach for it without him noticing, her hand twitched almost instinctively toward the device. Of course, the very moment her body betrayed her, the Joker stood up from leaning on the counter, once again pointing a loose finger at her as he rounded the corner into the living room. Leila remained perfectly still, as though she was standing down a lion; no sudden movements or eye contact.

"Ah, ah," His singsong, raspy voice floated to her ears like knives on a chalkboard. He was shaking his head slowly so that the lank strands of fading green hair swung against the sides of his face. "This is a party for just you and me, Miss. Hawkin. It would be a shame for anyone else to ruin it." His tone had dropped an entire level in pitch, like a song sung purposely out of tune. He was approaching, closing the distance between them, his broad shoulders hunched slightly, his footfall barely making a sound as he crossed the carpet toward her, like a predator hunting his prey. Leila's body once again disclosed her fear by forcing her to take a shaky half-step back toward the sliding glass, thinking perhaps, if she was quick enough, she could unlock balcony door, open it, and scream down to the street below for help.

As these thoughts passed through her mind, Leila noticed something of a curious, somewhat delighted twinkle appear behind the Joker's black eyes, where the deep circles of makeup tightened around the pinpricks that were his soulless pupils. To her horror, he let out a laugh, motioning toward the balcony door beyond her while his lips gave a sickening smack.

"I guarantee I can pull a knife out of my pocket faster than you can unlock that door," he growled, as though he had been listening in on her thoughts from seconds before. Again, his tone bounced back upward into that annoyingly clowny decibel, where every word seemed to be laced with laughter. "But if you'd like to try it, go right ahead!"

As the Joker burst into suppressed giggles, Leila finally found her tongue, at last feeling her body unlock in a certain sense, to where her nerves seemed to unfreeze and begin firing synapses with record speed. Her hands were shaking, whether from fear that her worst nightmare had come to life, or anger from this cruel man's mocking tone, she was not sure. Swallowing hard on the lump in her throat, she opened her mouth, hoping against all hope that her voice would sound more confident than she felt.

"What are you doing here?" A cringe of disgust nearly overtook her face when she realized what a stupid question she had asked. The Joker seemed to agree with her as he let out a bark of a laugh, tossing his head slightly as he began circling her, passing on her left, staring down at her, studying her from all directions.

"I thought we had already covered that," came the devil's quiet voice from her shoulder, where Leila could feel him drawing closer to her. "I needed to get you alone so-"

Leila closed her eyes, clenching her hands into fists at her sides when she felt her ponytail move against her back, heard the soft sliding of her hair through leather as the Joker threaded his fingers through it. This was truly her worst possible dream come true. It felt almost as though she had been thrust headfirst into a nightmare and that any minute, she was going to wake up in her bed, safe at home. She could only pray that this would be the case. As her panicked and frazzled mind caught up with what the Joker had said, things finally began clicking into place and her body started to fill with a wave of sickening anger that felt rather out of place, given the danger of her current situation. Though, upon reflecting back to years prior, she noticed that anger was a usual close successor to fear in Leila's range of emotions.

Terror pierced her the moment she sensed him pause behind her, a shadow at her back ready to pounce at any moment. Every instinct was telling her to flee, get out and run for her life, but she was frozen in place, the tremors of fear tingling through her limbs. As she felt his breath crawl across the top of her head like a hot breeze, the unspoken ending to his last words filled her head with horrific images. It was too quiet. Despite all the ambient noise from outside, the room seemed to be deathly silent, her only focus being the terrorist lurking behind her. This ominous peace only served to highlight the sound of the Joker inhaling deeply through his nose against the tightened hair beneath the elastic holding her ponytail in place. He was breathing in her scent, tasting her fear through the pheromones her body was producing, and she couldn't suppress the shudder that racked her body as she felt him exhale so close to her skin, his own foul scent permeating the air. His intent was clear, a blatant invasion of her personal space. He wanted her to understand that he could control her fear through his uncomfortable proximity. Leila hated that it was working, and that realization was enough to piss her off. Her eyes opened and she knew they flashed the rage that had flooded to the surface once more.

"Wait..." she began, gritting her back teeth together. "You...you stabbed that man," she murmured, her voice trembling slightly. The hold on her hair was released, his demonic energy shifted, moving around her right side to complete his circle, and he stood in front of her again. She shook her head in disbelief as the past week's events came rushing back and that anger bubbled at the pit of her stomach. "You gave that guy a heart attack and you...you set that building on fire?!" she shouted at him, without the slightest shred of fear, her indignation and rage at such heartless actions so severe that she was perfectly incapable of feeling any other emotion at the moment. Across from her, the Joker's intense gaze broke into a broad, satisfied smile. His gloved hands met together with a smack of leather on leather.

"Yep!" he exclaimed proudly. Leaning toward her, he nodded his head in the direction of the window over her shoulder, suddenly lowering his voice to something barely above a whisper. "And, I tossed our 'little' friend over the balcony there too."

A moment of stunned silence passed between them, where Leila bristled with anger, and the Joker cringed, as though bracing for her reaction, before-

"WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!"

He shrugged. "I didn't have your phone number," came his answer, spoken nonchalantly as if he had commented on the weather. Leila's jaw went slightly slack as the Joker turned away from her again, disappearing into the bedroom to begin going through the contents of his latest victim's closet, yanking apart the hangers to look at each item of clothing. Leila took a step forward, to turn and stand in the doorway to the bedroom, determined to keep him within her line of sight. "I tried 911 at first, but-" he paused to let out another giggle as he glanced back at her over his shoulder. "-but they said you weren't available." His words preceded yet more laughter.

Despite the absurdity of his previous comments, Leila did not feel able to remark on this, but instead gritted her teeth. "What do you want from me?" she asked, feeling truly sick to her stomach when she imagined the sort of answer he was about to give. Across the room at the closet, the Joker turned, clapping his gloved hands together once as he took a few steps toward her. Leila watched him approach, unable to help from noticing how very tall he appeared when not surrounded by a hoard of SWAT team officers; he had to stand at least six foot four.

"Yes, right to the point. I like that," he said, grinning so widely, it appeared that his scars could peel right off of his face. Leila struggled not to stare at his horrid disfiguration, and instead dropped her eyes to the top button of his dirty, perhaps once blue shirt, almost as though making eye contact with him would cause her physical pain. "I have a bit of a..." Leila chanced a glance upward at his face when his voice hesitated, only to find that he had licked his lips and was now squinting off into space, searching for the perfect word. "...Let's call it a job offer, hm?"

At these words, Leila could not stop herself from looking directly up at him, her confusion and surprise at his answer making the action impossible to resist. A frown furrowed her eyebrows. "A job offer?" she repeated him. The Joker nodded once, hard, sending his greasy hair flying into his face, where some of the smaller strands stuck to his makeup.

"A job offer." he said once again, and immediately Leila huffed, boldly rolling her eyes as she turned her back on him, figuring that if he had meant to hurt or kill her, he would have already done so by now. She moved away toward the bag of equipment on the floor near the sliding glass.

"Sorry, but I'm not interested," she answered in a more direct tone than she had intended. Something about the fact that he had injured so many people and destroyed so many lives just to get in touch with her was making her angry enough to abandon her sense of extreme caution around this man. "I already have a job and-" she began to go on further, her back still turned to him, but at that very moment, the Joker decided to make her situation more real to her than anything else had so far.

In an instant, his hands were on her, one grabbing her upper arm while the other took a fistful of hair into its grip, yanking her around to face him. Before Leila could stop herself, before she could even register what had happened, she was letting out a scream, squeezing her eyes shut as her body was thrown into a state of panic that she had not experienced for nearly six years. Suddenly she was not in an apartment, but in a dark and hazy dorm room, against a wall, booze-laced breath blowing across her face. She winced, struggling to move her only free hand, to grab him, hit him, slap him, do anything to get him away from her. Her knees attempted to crumble but the man gripping her held her body up straight, preventing her from sliding to the floor.

"Look at me."

This was not a request, but an order, and Leila gave no shred of a thought to disobeying. She opened her eyes to find herself chest to chest with her latest demon, whose black gaze now bouncing back and forth, up and down, all over her face, taking in everything about the display of terror currently etched into every feature there. Leila could not help but wonder if he was feeling perhaps a bit confused by her sudden turn in demeanor, and yet she knew beyond all shadow of a doubt that he was simply delighted by it. To her shock, he seemed to decide against commenting on this and instead raised his eyebrows, stretching the black, wrinkled rings around his eyes.

"You already have a job and yet you're about as broke as Mister Markenson's legs down there, am I right?" he asked, his gaze flickering back and forth between her slowly flooding brown eyes. "I know more about your...finances than I think you realize, so trust me when I say, you might want to reconsider my offer." Leila bit down hard on the inside of her bottom lip, practically holding her breath to prevent her tears from spilling down her cheeks. The Joker mercifully let go of her and held up a hand, where he ticked off one finger. Leila felt feeling flood back into her own fingers from where his grip had been impeding circulation.

"I'm offering you fifteen thousand a month, in cash, to be my personal medic," he began. Leila blinked. struggling to ignore the way her stomach jumped excitedly at the sound of that amount of money. "That means, when I call for help, no matter what it is, you come a-runnin' to my aid with your little bag of goodies. You don't get sick days, you don't get time off, and you certainly don't get to quit. But let's face it, to a poor little church mouse like you?" He paused to laugh again, a bit of that malicious twinkle returning to his eyes. "Fifteen grand sounds like pretty fair compensation for a job like that."

A soft crackling of static caused Leila to jump with another squeak of fright, as though someone had fired a gun next to her head.

"Hawkin, what's up? You got somebody up there?" Jay's voice asked.

Leila let out a gasp, her eyes widening; the magnitude of her situation had caused her to forget entirely that she was still working her current job and was supposed to be searching for a second victim. Her mouth opened slightly in shock as the Joker took a step away from her, tossing out his arms to both sides before allowing them to slap against his legs. He nodded his head in the direction of the radio.

"Tell him no and that you're coming back downstairs," he instructed. Leila blinked. He wasn't going to pull out a gun and hold it to her head, force her to come with him? He was going to let her go, knowing full well that she could run straight to the police, and tell them everything that had just happened? This made absolutely no sense to her, but instead of wasting time asking questions and putting Jay's life at risk by giving him cause to come upstairs to check on her, she hastily fumbled for the radio, clearing her throat before speaking.

"Uh, no, Jay," she answered firmly, keeping her eyes focused on the Joker's narrowed gaze. "There's no one up here. I'm headed back down."

A moment passed before Jay's voice came again."Ten-four."

Holding the radio at her side, Leila watched as the Joker reached into the inside pocket of his gray jacket, before producing a single joker playing card. He handed it to her, grinning as he began taking backwards steps away from her, toward the closed door to the apartment on the other side of the room.

"You have twenty-four hours to think it over," he said, but then wagged a finger and squinted at her in a mockingly stern way, once again displaying his knack for switching his demeanor with dizzying rapidity. "If I don't hear from you by this time tomorrow night, I'm gonna assume you called the cops and...well, I won't be very happy about that, will I?"

As Leila stood there, shocked and overwhelmed, she watched him open the door, ready to step out into the hallway. Before he could do this however, she found herself calling out after him instinctively.

"What if I refuse?" she asked, wondering vaguely what sort of fresh madness had possessed her to ask this. The Joker turned, another hideous grin splitting his face as he hesitated in the doorway, baring a set of strait, yet slightly yellow teeth.

"You won't." Only two words sufficed as his answer before he left her one unnervingly creepy wink, and with that, he was gone, as quickly and silently as he had appeared.

During her rushed journey down the stairs, Leila could not stop herself from peering back over her shoulder every few seconds, waiting for the fateful sound of a stairwell door opening, or brown shoes approaching behind her. She could not believe nor understand how she had escaped that situation with her life, but at the moment, she was simply glad to be walking down these stairs of her own volition and not being dragged down them by force or otherwise. Hopefully Matt and Jay would not ask too many questions about the length of her trip upstairs; her brain was barely able to function under the weight of everything that had occurred.

The nighttime air beyond the confines of the apartment building was so different in its density that Leila nearly felt lightheaded upon stepping out onto the curb, taking a deep breath of it to fill her lungs. It was as though she had been suddenly given back her ability to breathe after having been subjected to the thick, oppressively evil atmosphere within apartment 305. Hoping to keep a very calm, normal look on her face as she approached the waiting ambulance, she inhaled several deep breaths of it, in an effort to purge the scent of gasoline and death from her senses. Matt was leaning out of the truck, a strange look on his face as he watched her drawing closer. Was his expression one of suspicion? Concern? Or was Leila perhaps feeling a bit paranoid? She hastily tried to recall another time in recent history when she had seen this look on his face, to compare it to the one there now for reference.

"You took forever," he stated, reaching out for the heavy bag of equipment, to give Leila both hands with which to hoist herself up into the ambulance. John Markenson was already in place along the stretcher, his neck strapped into a large yellow brace and his body bound to the board. Leila spared him a glance as she passed on her way to the jump seat, feeling a sensation of the utmost pity flow through her, and she wondered how unbelievably scared this poor man must have felt upon seeing the Joker enter his apartment. She felt she could identify with him.

The doors to the ambulance slammed shut, the sirens came to life as she leaned back in the seat, exhaling heavily as she pushed a strand of her hair away from her face as nonchalantly as possible. She chanced another glance at the victim on the stretcher. Fortunately, despite his eyes being open, he seemed to be in too much pain to give any explanation of who had thrown him over the balcony; Leila did not feel she had the emotional or physical strength to contend with Matt's questioning.

The inside of the ambulance was heavily silent as Leila stared at a random bolt on the leg of the stretcher with her eyes slightly widened. Her heart rate had mercifully returned to normal, the chills along her arms had receded and she was wondering what she could say to break the silence, tear her thoughts away from everything that had happened when Matt's voice nearly caused her to jump.

"What gives?" he asked quietly. Leila blinked, pulling her gaze up to look over at him and allow her eyebrows to furrow in a forcefully innocent manner.

"What do you mean?" she countered, shrugging her shoulders to boost the casual facade she had created. Matt's arms tossed as he leaned toward her slightly.

"You're about as white as your mom right now," he murmured, grinning when Leila grunted a halfhearted laugh at his feeble joke, bringing her hand up to rake her fingernails into the frizzy roots of her hair.

"I'm fine, just tired," she lied. "I had to run all over that building. His apartment door was locked so I had to go find the super to open it." Another shrug raised and lowered her shoulders.

Her answer seemed to satisfy Matt for the time being as he nodded and leaned back against the bench seat, reaching out one hand to feel the pulse at Mister Markenson's wrist. Leila watched him do this, fighting against the sick, sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Lying had never been particularly difficult for her, but she absolutely hated doing it to those select people she cared most for. Though she made herself believe this lie was in Matt's best interest.

After reaching the hospital and transferring their patient to the care of the emergency room staff, the ambulance was finally on its way back to fire house fourteen. The time was rapidly approaching midnight and the team was more than ready for their shift to be over, though Leila felt her reason for wanting to be home might have been the slightest bit more severe than anything Matt or Jay could come up with. As the truck pulled into the bay and came to a halt, Matt was the first to climb down, though as Leila followed him and turned to unlatch the stretcher, to pull it down for cleaning, he reached out, sighing heavily as he patted her on the shoulder.

"Go on home, rookie. Jay and I can handle this," he said, nodding his head toward the door to the fire house when Leila turned to look up at him. He grinned warmly. "You look dead on your feet."

To this, Leila gave another fake laugh, but could not help thinking how very accurate his words were. Leila could so easily have still been lying on the floor in that apartment, surrounded by a team of police officers, and her teammates, all wondering why she hadn't called immediately for help, or why the Joker had decided to take her life. The thought of this sent another chilling drop of fear throughout her warm, flowing blood. She was alive, very much so according to her heart, which had just palpitated painfully at the inside of her chest as though struggling to remind her that it was still beating, that her life had been spared...for the time being. Remembering that Matt was looking over at her expectantly, she nodded, sighing heavily as she turned away.

"Thanks," she answered him finally. "I'll see you guys on Friday." _Hopefully._

The traffic lights between the firehouse and Leila's apartment might as well have been invisible for all the notice she took of their color. Upon approaching a red light, she had slowed down a few yards from the intersection, leaned forward slightly and after seeing that there were no cars approaching nor police officers nearby, she floored the gas pedal and sped ahead. Stopping the car for more than a minute did not seem like a good idea. All she wanted was to launch herself into her apartment and curl up in a ball in the shower, attempt to wash away the grimy, disgusting sensation still crawling along her skin. It might have been her imagination, she was not entirely sure, but Leila fancied her clothes still reeked of gasoline. Perhaps she could burn her uniform shirt, pretend she had lost it and ask for a new one at work on Friday.

Once her car had been parked, Leila abandoned all semblance of appearing calm and broke into a literal run at the door leading from the garage into her apartment building. Her body was aching as though she had been thrown repeatedly against a wall, but her current state of open panic was making this exhaustion all but nonexistent, the adrenaline serving as some sort of natural steroid. Familiar doors flew past her as she raced along the hallway leading to her unit and only once she had reached the door bearing the numbers '612' did she stop running. Her key was already out, held at the ready in her shaking hand.

Hunger was not an issue for Leila that night. She already felt queasy and nauseated enough, even on an empty stomach, so the thought of eating something was enough to make her feel physically ill. Nevertheless, she had paused in the kitchen for a glass of water and to double check that Murphy's bowl had food before disappearing into her bedroom, closing and locking the door behind her as she went.

The water in the shower was running, it was hot, Leila was already stripped completely naked and yet there she stood, leaned against the counter, staring at the falling streams of steamy water, her eyes widened. Behind her, in the midst of her discarded clothing, sat a single playing card, a white piece of plastic coated paper, on which a black, laughing joker had been printed, the tail of the demon curled in on itself as the creature clutched its ribs. Seven numbers had been scrawled sloppily in red permanent marker along the top of the card, accompanied by the words, '_ask for', _followed by an arrow pointing at the vertical name along the far edge of the card. 'JOKER'

During her frantic run down the stairwell at the apartment building of John Markenson, Leila had hastily tucked the card into her bra against her left breast, thinking at the time that the chances were too great of the card falling out of her pocket for Matt or Jay to find. She had felt she could not take the risk in losing the life-threateningly important phone number or put her family and teammates lives at stake by misplacing it. In the following minutes between the ride from the hospital to the firehouse, then to her apartment, Leila had been so concerned with simply getting home alive that she had nearly forgotten the thing was even there. It was only once she had undressed and the card had fallen out that she remembered.

Snippets of the scene from the apartment were flashing through her mind in rapid succession. First, she was walking upstairs as a normal part of her job, then she was slowly turning around, bracing for her death as the Joker closed and locked the apartment door behind her. She was being grabbed, forced to turn and face him, he was smelling her, sizing her up, drinking her in, watching as she let out a sob, flinching, even though he had not yet raised a hand to strike her...

In the present, Leila let out a soft moan, her eyes stinging as tears amassed there. The panic, the fear and outright terror she had experienced that night was something she had not felt in nearly six years. The thought of it, the mere shadow of those sensations made the occurrence at college, in her dorm room, as fresh as though it had happened hours ago. The skin along her arms and at the back of her neck tingled, as though Shawn was standing right there, holding her, gripping her drunkenly as he breathed hot, vaporized alcohol breath across her face.

But this..._this _was worse, almost more traumatic in a way. After that fateful night, Leila never had to see him again. She had gone straight to the campus police, reported him and although nothing was done about the incident, Leila's father, her savior in many ways, had withdrawn her from school and brought her home to finish out her last four semesters at Gotham University. It truly seemed as though this one, ten minute encounter with her worst nightmare had dug up the most terrifying, dark time in her life and Leila could not help but wonder if the Joker was conscious of this or perhaps even intended it.

…...

"_I'm glad you made the team, rookie!" Matt exclaimed, clapping a nervous but excited Leila on the back as she stepped up into the ambulance of firehouse 14 for the first time. "I've been telling Jay for the longest time that we needed a girl around." _

_ The bald-headed, more seasoned paramedic, Jay, rounded the corner, holding out a box of latex gloves, smiling warmly at their newest coworker. "Yeah, we've found that females make better decisions in the more critical situations. So welcome aboard, and...try not to let Matt talk your ear off, okay?" _

_ Leila laughed, glancing at the young man seated on the bench seat. He frowned, his lightly stubbled cheeks reddening slightly. "I only talked to you all the time because there was no one else! Now that I have Leila to keep me company back here, you'll be all alone in the front seat, sittin' there like a sad dope 'cause nobody likes you." While Jay let out a laugh, Leila noticed Matt's eyes flicker over to her briefly. "Plus, you'll be all upset because you're not the prettiest girl on the team anymore, Jay." _

_ At this, Leila struggled not to roll her eyes; she had been expecting this sort of line at some point, but certainly not so early into her first shift. She struggled to resist the burning in her cheeks and was hoping she would not be forced to make a comment when mercifully, Jay __stepped in. _

_ He nodded in her direction, raising his eyebrows. "Careful, Matt, that sounds a lot like a harassment suit in the making," he warned, grinning in a playfully mischievous way as Matt's smile suddenly fell and his head whipped toward Leila. She could not help but laugh at the look of concern on his face, but shook her head all the same, holding up her hand. _

_ "Don't worry," she assured him with a comforting smirk. "It's fine. I know what a joke is." Matt seemed to deflate in relief, his expression melted into relaxation, but across from them, Jay was letting out a loud 'tut'. _

_ "I meant __me__!" he exclaimed, tossing his hands. "Keep talkin' like that, Matt, and I'll talk to the superiors about filing a suit." With that, he walked away huffily, his arms folded resolutely across his chest, leaving Leila to laugh and Matt to shake his head with a heavy roll of his eyes. _

_ "Jay and I joke and bicker a lot but we really look out for each other, ya know?" he said a few moments later, turning to his left to push the new box of gloves into the compartment over his shoulder. "And now that you're part of the team, we'll look out for you too," he turned back to face her, holding up two fingers with a kind smile. "Scout's honor." _

Leila's exhausted, itchy eyes stared listlessly at the ceiling high above her bed as she reflected on the past year of her life. Her sleep had been restless, punctuated by horrible dreams that caused her to wake with a gasp and left her to lie there, tossing and turning, unable to stay still. On the whole, she had only managed about three hours of solid rest, which she supposed was something of a miracle in and of itself, though she was currently feeling more tired and cranky than ever. The thought of the seemingly insurmountable, terrifying task before her did not exactly help. Turning her head toward the nightstand on her right, she reached out for her phone, lifting it from its place to read the time. '_10:38am' _

Only twelve hours left before a decision had to be made.

After brushing her teeth and emphatically avoiding the joker card still lying in the midst of her clothes on the bathroom counter, Leila found herself standing in the kitchen, staring down into the perfectly almond-shaped, bright yellow eyes of Murphy. His gray fluffy tail swished across the hardwood floor as he blinked up at her, waiting on tenterhooks for her to lean down and either scratch him lovingly along his cheek or pour food into his bowl. Both forms of affection were equally great to him, from what Leila could gather. After an impatient mew, Leila turned toward the pantry and leaned down to open the bag of dry cat food, but felt her heart sink when her hand traveled clear to the bottom, where only a few bowlfuls of kibble remained, rattling around pathetically. She pushed firmly past the tears that threatened to gather and filled Murphy's bowl.

"I'll go to the store tomorrow, buddy, I promise," she told him lovingly, running her hand along his back as he immediately began to eat. She may have been poor, but she would sooner let herself go hungry than force her cat to go without.

The day seemed to disappear before Leila's eyes at an alarmingly fast rate. One minute she was standing in the living room, trying to decide if she felt like pretending to watch a movie or begin scrubbing the smell of gasoline out of her uniform, the next, she was in the kitchen attempting to convince herself she wanted to eat lunch. _What happened to breakfast?_ That never ending, ever growing pile of bills on the dining table was once again calling her, but Leila did not feel she possessed the necessary physical or emotional strength to do work on it. _Fifteen thousand dollars would sure help..._

"No, Leila. Stop it."

She said these words aloud to herself several times throughout the day. No amount of money would ever be enough for her to agree to _help _the man who had ruined so many lives, killed so many people. And yet he expected her to take fifteen thousand in cash for her to help save _his _life, if the situation were to arise? It was impossible, _stupid _of him to even begin to assume that sort of bribe would work on her, when she was perfectly happy with the life she already had, the job she was currently working. She was supposed to throw all that away and commit to aiding a terrorist? The idea was almost laughable were it not so horrifying.

"_But let's face it, to a poor little church mouse like you? Fifteen grand sounds like __pretty fair compensation for a job like that."_

Leila sighed, leaning her head against the back of the couch. As much as she hated to admit it, the Joker had been right. Fifteen thousand dollars _did _sound like a lot of money to her. It meant her bills would be paid, on time and in full every month. Murphy would never go without food, and neither would _she _for that matter. How many times had she settled herself to a simple peanut butter sandwich on the premise of 'Oh, I'm not that hungry', when it was really that she did not have much else to eat? She could go _shopping_, get her hair done, perhaps even her eyebrows too, or hell, go for a whole spa day all together! This life of luxury was tempting to say the least and Leila knew why.

Despite her father being one of the most prominent, reputable neurologists in the state and a man of considerable wealth, Leila had never been spoiled. Her father, Edward Hawkin, had come from a tragically poor family, and had been forced to work for nearly everything he owned, working two, sometimes three jobs to pay his way through college and medical school. So of course, he had expected Leila to do the same. No, he never let her go hungry or without the things she needed, like clothing or proper supplies for school, but anything she truly _wanted _more than anything, she had to work for. Her first car, for instance, had been paid for entirely by her first job, hostessing at a chain restaurant. So now that she was fully grown and living on her own, Leila felt that this way of life, the way she had been raised, could not change. Anything she wanted, she worked for. Though as of late, her working had not led to anything beyond anxiety over whether or not her power would remain on or her hot water would continue to work or Murphy would have food or-

Her forehead met her hands and she sighed into them, her breath warm against her face. Who was she kidding? Fifteen thousand dollars would save her life, and she hated to think how literal that statement was. The Joker did not seem like the type to let her simply refuse his offer without there being some sort of terrible repercussions. If she were to say no, she could only imagine that this would put not only her life at stake, but the lives of those people she most cared for- her father, her mother, Jay, and Matt and their families as well. Perhaps it would truly be smarter of her to accept his offer, play along with his little game. _I mean, how many times can the guy get injured? I might only have to help him every once in a while..._

This same cyclical, internal conversation lasted throughout the day, though Leila noticed the tone was changing gradually from more on the 'con' side of the argument, toward the 'pro' half, until she actually caught herself thinking through all the things she would like to buy. Upon realizing what she was doing, she attempted to stem the budding excitement at the thought of going into the grocery store and being able to stock her fridge to overflowing, but found that she was unable to do so. It was no use trying to talk herself out of it anymore. Her financial situation was getting too serious and one fleeting glance at an unpaid bill on her table was enough to finally make the decision for her. She needed help and she was about to get it.

At five o'clock, Leila took a deep breath, rocking her head to both sides to crack her neck, as if preparing for a physical altercation, and she stood from her couch, to march into her bathroom. The Joker's card was exactly where she had left it the previous day, but as she reached out for it, her fingers faltered, curling in on her palm as though reacting reflexively to the negative energy attached to it. Did she really want to do this? Was she really signing her soul over to the devil for money? Yes, she was. And if she didn't do it now, she would likely change her mind and regret it for the rest of her life...however short that would turn out to be.

Pushing past her moment of hesitation, she picked up the card, grabbed her phone and plopped down on the edge of her bed, once again inhaling slowly through her nose to steady her nerves. The seven red numbers were dialed into her phone, and for several moments, she sat there, staring at the green button on the touch screen. It was now or never.

The phone rang only once before an unfamiliar, gruff male voice answered.

"Name?"

Leila frowned, caught off guard. She had been steeling herself to hear the clowny, taunting voice of the Joker through the phone, but had to admit, she was glad he had not been the one to answer. This momentary sidetrack gave her another few seconds to prepare herself or otherwise change her mind.

"Uh...Leila H-Hawkin?" she stammered awkwardly, picking anxiously at a corner of the playing card in her hand. There was a pause on the other end of the call.

"Hold on."

There was a distinct sound of dialing, the beeps through the speaker indicating that this particular number she had been given had been set up as a middle-man, a sort of 'phone bouncer' to prevent unwanted callers from reaching the Joker directly. Leila could not deny that she was slightly impressed by their security measures. Seven digits were dialed, before another faint ringing came through the phone. It rang only twice before-

"_Hellllllooooo?" _

_That _was the voice she had been expecting. Goosebumps rose up all along her arms. She closed her eyes.

"Boss, I got a Leila Hawkin callin' for ya," said the gruff voice. There was another pause, followed by the Joker's delighted hum.

"Oh, what a _delightful _surprise," he said, his voice bouncing through intervals and octaves. There was a faint click of a phone being hung up, and suddenly, Leila and the Joker were alone once again. She heard him lick his lips and her stomach churned. "_So,_ my little church mouse, calling in early I see. Have we made a decision?" Even with only the sound of his voice, Leila could tell he was grinning; she could hear it as plainly as if he was standing right in front of her. She swallowed hard.

"I'll do it."

.

.

.

.

.

A/N: Sooooooo sorry for the longer-than-usual wait, dearies! Had a few distractions, (i.e.- my birthday, new job, housework, etc.) but the good news is that the next chapter will DEFINITELY be out sooner than the previous one! So I'd like to thank ALL of you for reading, reviewing, following, and favoriting this story as I am having a BLAST writing it! And just a reminder, if you'd like to see pictures of the characters (I have one of Joker and Leila together donchakno?), get updates and 'behind the scenes' info on the inner workings of this story, please feel free to either contact me through email, PM or, most preferably, add me on facebook under my fanfiction profile. Just search for 'Haven Queenofmean Hunter' and there I'll be! You can't miss it. I look forward to hearing from you! Again, thanks so much to all of you! See you next time! = ] -QoM


	7. Alpha and Omega

Leila paced the living room of her apartment, beating a path into the floor with each pass she made. Her cell phone was sitting on the dining table, silent, dark and she watched it sporadically, shooting glances toward the device every few seconds as though expecting it to explode. Only minutes prior, the Joker had told her to wait for a call, which would explain her first instructions. She cast an anxious glance at the tall windows of the far wall; the sun was going down, projecting a flaming orange glow through the room. Part of her wanted to feel nervous that she would be out after dark, running an errand for the Joker, but she felt that perhaps she ought to start getting used to it. It did not seem likely that the most wanted man in Gotham did much 'business' in broad daylight. Leila was hoping that her involvement with his schemes would be kept to a minimum.

The sound of her phone ringing might as well have been cannon fire with the way it shattered the silence of her apartment and caused her to jump. Exhaling heavily through her nose, she approached it and answered hastily, unwilling to imagine the sort of trouble she would be in if she were to miss the call.

"Hello?"

"You will leave your building in ten minutes, and drive to the parking garage at the corner of 8th and Stile. A man will meet you on the third floor." _Click. _

The abruptness of this call left Leila standing there for several moments with the phone pressed to her ear, frowning down at her pad of paper and pencil in confusion. That was it? The voice on the other end had not belonged to the Joker but the unfamiliar man had clearly been instructed to call in his stead, bearing the rather frustratingly vague information. Shaking her head, Leila copied the address and set her phone down, feeling annoyed with herself for the slight pang of disappointment that shot through her. If anything, she should have been relieved beyond belief that the specified parking garage was only a five to ten minute drive from her building and that this was the only thing being asked of her...so far.

After hurriedly applying some fresh clothes and tying her unruly hair back into a ponytail, Leila stood in the short hallway near her kitchen, staring intently at the time on the microwave screen. Only two minutes remained before she was supposed to leave, but Leila was having second thoughts. Was this _really _what she wanted to do? Going on this errand was the deathblow to her somewhat normal existence, launching her into a world of crime and a fear-laden life, constantly anxious over being caught, or worse, killed. If she acted now and drove straight to the police department, she might be able to end this before it could start. She had gone over both sides of the argument ceaselessly all day, first making up her mind to call the police, call her father, find someone who could help her get out of this mess. But the money had been the deciding factor, no matter which way she looked at it. She was close to losing her home, even closer to losing her car, and the fifteen thousand dollars was a way out of her debt. So yes, she did need to do this. Besides, when had the police ever helped her in the past?

For a Thursday night, the streets of Gotham were surprisingly busy, people walking to and fro, entering restaurants and movie theaters, shopping and seemingly at ease with their lives. Leila could not help but feel rather envious of them, but had to remind herself of the payment she would be receiving for agreeing to live in such doubt and dread. The parking garage was fairly close to her apartment, though she wished it was further. She could use another few minutes to gather her racing thoughts and gain some external composure.

It was a short-term garage, monitored at its entrance by a guard in a small booth, who leaned out and motioned for Leila to roll down her window as her car approached. She obeyed the instruction, hitching a casual smile onto her face.

"How long you stayin'?" he asked, reaching back into his booth for a pen and a pad of tickets. Leila took a deep breath, sighing in a thoroughly nonchalant sort of way.

"Oh, probably just a few minutes," she answered. "I'm meeting a friend."

The guard hesitated. Leila could see his eyes bouncing back and forth between hers from behind his lightly tinted sunglasses. She felt her stomach seize up and an increasingly familiar drop of dread sank down into her stomach; was she about to be stopped this early on? "Well, I'll still have to charge you the ten dollars for an hour park, okay?" he asked a few moments later and it took a great deal of effort to prevent Leila from sighing in relief. She let out a short laugh instead, reaching over into the passenger seat for her wallet.

"That's fine. I understand," she answered, still smiling as she handed the man a ten dollar bill. The guard nodded his head once, slipping the bill into a drawer and pressing a large green button on the desk to operate the mechanical barrier in front of Leila's car.

"Alright, have a nice night."

"I sure hope so," Leila breathed desperately to herself as her window rolled up and her car moved forward into the interior of the multilevel garage.

Almost as though it had been planned that way, each ascending level of the garage was absolutely packed with cars, people walking to and from their vehicles, laughing, carrying on, not paying a single moment of attention to anything suspicious or otherwise that might have been happening. Leila found this to be something of a blessing. If she was to be meeting with her 'friend' in a camera-monitored parking facility, it was quite fortunate that there were so many people around. This left less of a chance for the guard to have his eye on any one spot for longer than a few seconds, if he happened to be paying any attention at all. Leila had long since abandoned her trust in public safety figures to keep her safe.

Slowly, steadily she wound her way through the crowded garage, avoiding vehicles as they backed out of parking spaces, and keeping her eyes peeled for the strange man she was supposed to be meeting. What sort of car did criminals drive? She supposed a white van was sort of cliché but she could not imagine this person, someone who she assumed worked for the Joker, driving anything nicer than that. Perhaps, once she reached the third level and circled it once, the man would make himself apparent to her, make it so there was no mistake in his identity. Leila certainly hoped that would be the case.

As her car leveled out on the inclined ramp leading to the third floor of the garage, she leaned forward slightly in the seat, glancing left and right at the rows of parked, empty cars on either side of the lane. The situation was really starting to make her nervous. If it was some elaborate trap to kidnap her or something of that nature, being in a crowded parking garage may or may not have been helpful. Leila was just wondering distractedly how loud she would be able to scream when her car turned a corner and her 'friend' was immediately obvious.

A young man was standing at the end of a silver Mercedes Benz, wearing black sweatpants and a plain gray t-shirt, one of his ankles crossed over the other, revealing an expensive-looking pair of running shoes as he leaned against the back of the vehicle. He seemed nonchalant with his arms folded across his chest, perfectly at ease with his task, and although there was not necessarily an air of wrongdoing about him, Leila could tell without question that this was the person she was supposed to be meeting. As her car approached, the man turned his head toward the noise, lowered his head slowly, watching her closely through the windshield from behind his dark, soon to be unnecessary sunglasses. Ever so slightly, his head jerked in the direction of a single empty parking space several cars down from his car, indicating discreetly that he would like her to pull in there. Leila obeyed this instruction without hesitation, but glanced over her shoulder as her car moved past, watching with another inkling of anxiety as the man began following her on foot.

Her small gold Camry came to a stop in the parking spot, though before she could even reach for the gear to shift it into park, her passenger door was being opened and the man was sliding into the seat beside her, bringing the heavy scent of sweat and cigarettes with him. He exhaled heavily, glancing to his right into the rear view mirror just outside the window to watch observantly as a small family walked past the back of Leila's car. She held her breath, partly from the overwhelming stench of tobacco smoke, but mostly due to the fact that she knew she was breathing a bit more heavily than normal; her nerves were at an all time high.

"So you must be 'da doc," the man said, revealing a very strong New England style accent. Leila blinked. That was not _nearly_ what she had expected him to say.

"I'm not a- a doctor," she stammered, caught off guard by his words. "I'm just-"

"Look, I don't got all day," he interrupted, prompting Leila to instantly shut her mouth and lean back slightly in her seat, turned toward him to keep him as fully in her sight as possible. "I was told to give you 'dese, so that's what I'm doin'." Lifting his hips out of the seat, the man reached a hand into the pocket of his sweatpants, and what he removed from it nearly made Leila's heart stop; it was a stack of one hundred dollar bills, bound together with a rubber band. He reached over to hand it to her, but Leila was so astounded by seeing that much cash in one place, intended _just for her, _that she hesitated. The man seemed to think her reaction was due to suspicion rather than pure shock as he sighed impatiently, moving his head in a way that suggested he had rolled his eyes from behind his black shades. "I swear it's all there. Five G's directly from the guy in charge," He paused turning his head to look over at her and his heavy eyebrows rose from behind the frames of his sunglasses. "There's a note in there wit' another address where you meet the guy to get your stuff. So go there now, no other stops or nothin'."

With that, the man opened the door and climbed out, leaving Leila confused but ultimately surprised at the simplicity with which the event had taken place. She leaned to the side toward the closing passenger door to quickly open her mouth and ask a question, but the door slammed in her face. Just as quickly as the man had appeared, he was gone, walking back to his car and leaving Leila to exhale heavily through her nose, staring down at the stack of crisp bills in her hand. This was it. This was the answer to her problems and it was not even the full amount she had been promised. Honestly, just the five thousand was enough to pay her bills and get her out of the red, but she supposed the other ten would not exactly hurt either. Glancing into all three of her rear view mirrors, she hesitated, watching for passers-by before using her thumb to flip the stack of money like a deck of very valuable playing cards. Amidst the green, Leila's eyes caught sight of a flash of white and she stopped, thumbing backward a few bills until she found the slip of paper.

"_Westside bridge, the Narrows, 8:30"_

The Narrows. She had been expecting this. Any shady and underhanded dealings were almost always conducted in that part of the city, as though it had been deemed unfit for legal, normal life. It was the underbelly of Gotham, where the most low, scummy criminals lived and now Leila was being asked to go there, to do some of her own shady dealings. Did that make her one of them? Was she dooming herself to a life of illegality by going there? There was still time. She could _still _go to the police, turn in the money and the note and send a few SWAT members to the Westside bridge in her stead.

With another heavy sigh, she pushed her car into reverse and backed out of the parking spot, using her free hand to slide the handsome wad of money into the tight, concealed space between her car seat and the plastic wall of the center console. That money was hers and she'd be damned if she sacrificed the opportunity at a comfortable lifestyle for her sense of decency. The time was rapidly approaching eight o'clock so if she was going to be at the bridge on time, she had to be leaving then. The main entrances to the Narrows were on the opposite side of town from where she was, and Leila wondered if perhaps the Joker had already calculated that. If this was indeed the case, it begged the idea that the Joker knew where she lived and _that _was not a comfortable notion whatsoever.

The sun was now fully below the horizon, the last of the rays fading quickly as Leila took backstreets through the city, every now and again slipping her hand between the seat and center console, running one finger along the stack of money as though reassuring herself that this was all going to be worth it. Either that, or she felt the need to double check that it was there and she had not simply imagined it.

Light became more scarce, buildings became increasingly decrepit until Leila found it hard to believe that anyone, criminal or not, could live in them. The seemingly normal, happy and carefree people started to disappear from her surroundings as she moved toward the Narrows, and soon she was surrounded by nothing but distant car alarms, dimly lit, cardboard-covered windows and scattered, random people who looked as though they would love nothing better than to rob her. Her left hand slowly dropped from the steering wheel to the car door on her left as she pulled up at a stoplight, where she pushed down on the lock button, making doubly sure that she was secure. It seemed only fitting that she should be mugged while out running her first errands as the Joker's newest employee; she was not about to tempt fate by leaving her car unlocked.

Turning a corner, Leila felt that progressively familiar sense of dread and fear creeping up on her yet again as her eyes noticed a turn off up ahead, leading to none other than the infamous Westside bridge. This area was not even remotely close to her teams district, but she had heard stories over the past year of the gruesome murder victims that had been found beneath the old stone structure. Countless junkies who had succumbed to an overdose had turned up there, along with many a frozen or starved homeless person and Leila had to question, for what seemed like the millionth time, what the hell she was doing by going there.

As she approached the turn off, a dark, dirt path leading down off the street, she glanced into her rear view mirror and out of both car windows to either side of her, checking for police officers. So distracted by her nerves and checking the time every few minutes, she had completely failed to come up with some clever excuse as to what she was doing under a bridge in the dark with a stranger if someone were to show up and ask. But she supposed if a cop were to appear, she should take that as a sign that she was not meant to do this. Then she could explain what had happened over the past two days and what was being expected of her. Yes, she'd have to turn over the money but at least her life would be back to normal; back to living from paycheck to paycheck, praying her power would stay on... Leila hoped the police would stay out of the meeting.

Upon turning off her headlights, the darkness beneath the bridge became more dense, heavy as though a blanket had been draped over the scene, the only lights emanating from the distant inner city of Gotham. Her car came to a stop completely beneath the bridge and for several long moments, she sat completely still, her breathing slow and deep, the only sound she could hear besides the vague rushing and gurgling of the canal beneath the bridge overhead. She was entirely alone there, no other car, no homeless people camping out, no junkies getting their fix. Just Leila and her stack of money, locked inside her car. Again, she wondered in a rush of panic if this was some cleverly assembled trap, if the Joker had simply lured her there to have her killed or kidnapped. But then, the time on her dash read only 8:26. Perhaps she was simply early.

Lo and behold, only a minute later, the sound of tires crunching loose gravel caught her attention and upon looking up, Leila could see a white van rounding the opposite corner. The headlights were off, just as hers had been and it was crawling toward her car, coming to a stop only once it had pulled up right alongside her. Looking over, she could make out a bald head through the glass of the front window and her gaze shifted quickly to the side panels of the van, where the words '_Cool Time AC installation and repair' _were faded and chipped against the white paint. Was this who she was supposed to be meeting? Or was this simply a coincidence that some other person had showed up here to perform their own underhanded business transaction? The door opened and out stepped a tall, heavyset man, who glanced around before approaching the driver side window of Leila's car. She held her breath as he reached out and knocked on her window. In response, she rolled it down by only a few inches so he could speak through the crack.

"Leila Hawkin?" asked a gruff voice. She swallowed hard upon hearing her name leave the man's mouth, but nodded hastily, glancing upward instinctively when the bridge rumbled, a car passing by overhead. "Alright, get out and open the trunk."

_Oh god, _Leila thought in another rush of panic. _He's about to knock me out and put me in my own trunk. _

Hoping for the best but expecting the worse, Leila obeyed and got out of her car slowly, but left it running in case she needed to make a quick getaway. The stranger was sliding open the wall of his van and as she walked past, she chanced a glance inside, but found that it was too dark to make out the identity of any one shape. However as she turned, after opening the trunk of her car, she nearly jumped when the man suddenly appeared at her side, holding a large, surprisingly familiar bag of equipment. Leila felt her stomach give a lurch; it was exactly like the one she had at work, to a tee, even down to the 'Gotham City EMS' logo emblazoned across the front. She pointed it at it, mouthing wordlessly as the man hoisted the bag into her car and reached up to push the metal trunk hatch closed. He turned to her but ignored her silent stammering as he reached into his pocket, only for his hand to reappear holding a small, basic cell phone.

"This is for you," he grunted. Leila took the phone slowly, quickly looking up at him to ask what she was supposed to do now, but he was already moving away, glancing back and forth along the dirt path as he climbed back into his van. Finally, she found her tongue, trotting toward his window, tossing her arms in confusion and frustration that she had gone through so much emotional turmoil that evening in exchange for a painfully small amount of information.

"What am I supposed to do now?" she asked, raising her voice slightly to be heard through the window, behind which the man was now pulling back on the gear to shift into drive. He glanced over, but to her dismay only shook his head as if to indicate that he was either not supposed to tell her or that he did not know. The van began moving forward so Leila huffed in annoyance and took a step back, turning to her car to slide back into the driver's seat. Obviously, she felt she ought to be grateful that more had not been demanded of her that evening, but she still did not feel entirely satisfied. Something more, something concrete needed to be explained to her, like a defined job description, just so she could be absolutely sure of what she was getting herself into.

Suddenly, the cell phone in her hand was ringing shrilly, shattering the silence within her car and causing her to jump with a gasp and look down at the lighted device. Her eyebrows furrowed. The screen did not give a name for the caller, nor a phone number, just the word 'Unknown' as it continued to ring, one sharp, high-pitched trill after another. Hurriedly, Leila pressed her thumb to the green button to answer it, though a deep, sinking part of her already had a vague idea of whose voice she was about to hear. She did not give a greeting, but simply listened.

"What's up, _doc?"_ asked a nasally, raspy voice through the speaker next to her ear. The hair along Leila's arms began to rise; even through the phone, she could feel his menace. She swallowed once in an effort to clear her throat, before responding.

"You tell me," she replied. "I just met with someone under the Westside bridge and-"

"Good, _go-o-o-o-o-o-d", _growled the voice of the Joker. "So I'm sure you're wondering where you're supposed to go _now?_ Home, maybe?"

Leila hesitated, glancing into her rear view mirror anxiously, checking that there was still no one pulling down the dirt ramp behind her. "Yes," she answered honestly. "If there's nothing else, I'd-"

Again, she was interrupted, this time by a low chuckle. "Oh, but there _is _something else," the Joker taunted. "I've got _one more stop _for you, then you can run on home, _promise." _ Leila frowned into the phone, wondering if his 'promises' had ever been trusted by anyone, ever. Struggling not to sigh at the thought of traveling all the way across town for a second time that night, she pushed her car into drive and spoke.

"Where?" she asked simply.

"My house," he said, his voice suddenly losing all hint of clowniness and instead taking up a note of professionalism. Leila felt her stomach go plummeting down into her ankles. She had been afraid that he might ask her to see him that night and had to think, by wanting more information, she had not necessarily meant from _him._ "West and 21st, the Narrows, Riverside Auto Shop. Be here in ten minutes and bring your kit inside." _Click. _

If Leila had not known to look for it, 'Riverside Auto Shop' might as well have been invisible to the naked eye. Tucked back into a narrow lane off of a side street, the business looked as though it had been shut down, dormant for years with blackened, grimy windows and two large, rusty garage doors. Leila, of course knew that this was not the case. It was currently housing the city's most notorious criminal, the same terrorist she had encountered only a few weeks ago, the same man she had sworn was the most evil being on the planet...her new boss. A heavy sigh escaped her as she climbed out of the car. Again, her mind screamed the question '_What am I doing here?!', _but again, she ignored it, walking back to her trunk to pop it open and reach inside for her new kit. It was slightly heavier than the one she had for work and the canvas bag gave a quiet jingle as she lifted it out, the sound of tiny glass bottles clanking together inside.

With her trunk closed and the car locked, Leila turned toward the building, tilting her head back to look upward at the building, and instantly, her eyes found what she had been looking for- security cameras. She was not surprised by this, but could not help but feel slightly impressed by the measures the Joker had taken to ensure the privacy and security of his hideout. The main entrance to the auto body shop stood to the left of the two large, garage doors in the form of a rusty, painted and chipped metal door. She walked toward it, glancing up and down the lane for any sign of other cars or people. It was empty.

Within a few feet of the door, Leila nearly screamed and hit the ground as a bright floodlight suddenly came on overhead, her motion activating it to shine down on her. She figured this was to illuminate her face so the cameras above could capture an image of the person standing on the stoop. Sighing in slight relief, she reached out to knock on the door, giving three gentle raps against the metal before taking a half-step backward and glancing down at her feet. Her eyes caught sight of a dirty doormat and for the first time all day, her face broke a smile; _'__Bless this home'. _She allowed herself a heavy roll of her eyes and had just raised her gaze back to the door when it opened, revealing not the Joker, but yet another young man. He glared at her from between two cheekbone length curtains of greasy, straight hair. Leila wasn't sure what to say so she resorted to her favorite standby of looking awkward and stammering stupidly.

"I um...was told to-"

"You Hawkin?" the young man grunted in a very neanderthal sort of way. Leila resisted the insane urge to laugh and instead nodded. Without another word, he took a step back, into a dimly lit hallway, holding open the door for her to walk through, which she did, glancing to either side of her at the dingy and chipped, painted walls.

It was immediately obvious why the Joker always smelled of gasoline. The air within the abandoned auto body shop reeked of it, as though a massive quantity of the chemical had been spilled somewhere and left to ferment. The stench of it was even more overwhelming in person than it was on his clothing and for a few moments, Leila felt somewhat lightheaded from it. Blinking hard, she followed her guide down the hallway and out into the largest portion of the building, where they paused.

"Wait here," the man instructed before turning on his heel and marching over toward a very unstable-looking set of metal stairs to the left of the massive room. Leila watched him go but did not allow her eyes to linger on his retreating form; the rest of the facility was attracting her attention.

It seemed over the time that he had been staying there, the Joker had attempted to make this uninhabited business a bit more like a house, but not to great effect. Like the doormat outside, other halfhearted touches of normalcy had been scattered here and there throughout the garage, such as an upturned milk crate for small table, a punctured and oozing beanbag chair and a moldy couch across from a very old television. The old hydraulic lifts had remained behind and were raised to the ceiling, barren of any car but looking more like two greasy metal columns. Leila glanced up at these but gave a start, turning her gaze to where a loud shout of laughter had just emanated from another doorway across the room from her. The laugh was unfamiliar and most certainly was not the Joker's so she watched the threshold, slightly intrigued by who else had been invited to visit that night.

The frosted glass window in the door revealed the vague shape of a human being before it was thrown open and in marched two men, chuckling between themselves as they swigged from open beer bottles. Hoping to blend in with the wall, Leila took a step back as the men walked into the room, though for all the notice they took of her, she might as well have been transparent. She was not complaining; these two men did not seem like the type with which she would like to have much interaction. As one finished his beer with a loud belch and tossed the bottle aside to start a second or possibly sixth, yet another door opened, this time upstairs. Suddenly Leila was covered in chills, the hair on the back of her neck rising. He was coming.

The Joker appeared on the landing, having just emerged from what looked like an old office, grinning from ear to ear and looking thrilled about something. Somehow he had managed to recover his purple ensemble and was wearing all of it, though the heavy purple coat and tie had been shed for the time being, leaving him in the purple pinstriped pants, blue patterned shirt and green vest. Leila looked away from him quickly, averting her eyes as he began to approach, hopping down the stairs with almost indecent enthusiasm.

"Welcome to my humble abode, doc," he greeted her loudly, jumping the bottom two steps and landing squarely on his feet, his hands held out as though he had accomplished a great gymnastic feat. Leila looked over toward his direction, ashamed to feel her cheeks warming when she realized the two strange, drinking men were now staring avidly at her from the middle of the garage. "I'm _thrilled _you could make it," the Joker continued without so much as a glance toward any of the other people present. His grin expanded when he must have noticed her jaw give a tick of anxiousness. "We need to have a little..._interview_, so if you'd be so kind as to join me-" Even from across the room, Leila flinched when his hand swung to the side, pointing up the stairs behind him, a shrill whistle escaped from between his teeth, directing her like he would a dog. And exactly like a dog, she obeyed him without hesitation, walking over to begin moving up the stairs ahead of him, carefully dodging his extended arm as she passed.

After side-stepping at the top of the stairs and allowing him ahead of her, Leila watched as the Joker pushed open the door to the old office, that horrible grin still evident on his face. She swallowed hard, glancing to her left as she moved into the small room, where an old desk stood in front of the windows, though she could not yet see what was on it. The room was almost pitch dark, due to the large sheet of black paper stretched across the glass, blocking out any light from the remainder of the building. Leila jumped a moment later when the door closed with a sharp snap behind her. She was suddenly, unexpectedly in a dark room with the Joker; exactly the last place she ever wanted to be. To her relief, another noise reached her ears, this time in the form of a soft click as the Joker switched on a bright desk lamp, illuminating the surface of the desk and the paper detritus that littered it. Leila's eyes had just noticed an old but seemingly functional computer at the far corner of the table when the Joker's bouncy voice filled the room.

"Have a seat," he instructed, motioning lazily with one hand while he turned to lean against the desk. She hesitated, glancing over her shoulder at the nearly empty space, her stomach sinking miserably when she noticed what appeared to be the Joker's bed.

It was nothing more than a single, twin mattress on the dirty floor, no sheets nor pillows, but merely a thin blanket crumpled and tossed aside as though it was barely used. Leila _really _did not want to sit there as it looked about the most uncomfortable, dirty thing she had ever seen. Luckily, it seemed that he did not intend her to as he pushed the rickety, rolling desk chair toward her. She accepted this gladly and sat down, placing the kit of medical equipment between her feet on the floor but did not remove her hands from the straps; if he was about to launch himself at her to wrap his fingers around her throat, she needed something, _anything _to try and defend herself. Perhaps there was a pair of scissors or needle in there...The Joker, however, did not seem to be preparing himself for an attack as he merely leaned back, bracing his movement with his makeup-stained hands behind him on the desk's surface.

"_So..._" he began, squinting his black-ringed eyes until they were mere slivers in his evil face. "_Lay-luh Hawkin...Laayyyy-luh..."_ He repeated her name in a contemplative sort of tone, enunciating it slowly, playing with it, clearly remembering the goosebumps that had risen all over her bare arms the first time he said it back in the ambulance a few weeks prior. She struggled not to allow a hint of discomfort onto her face and remained perfectly still, staring up at him in silence, waiting for him to go on. He did, changing tact in an instant and turning abruptly to pull a piece of paper toward him from the scattered mess on the desk. "Been at the..." he paused to wiggle his fingers, searching for the word he needed. "-paramedic gig a while?"

Leila swallowed, shaking her head, unable to help but feel like she had just entered a real job interview. "About a year," she answered, her voice more timid than she would have liked it to sound. She cleared her throat, attempting to force more strength into it before speaking again. Across from her, the Joker's eyebrows raised, stretching the wrinkled black rings around his eyes as he scanned the piece of paper in front of him. Leila blinked; had he somehow gotten his hands on her original resume to the Gotham Fire Department? Her gaze dropped to the back of the piece of paper, attempting to read through it.

"What did you do _before_ you decided to become an_ underpaid heroine?" _he asked a few moments later, dropping the piece of paper back onto the desk and leaning forward slightly, anticipating her answer. Feeling more comfortable with the surprisingly familiar and somewhat routine question, Leila answered immediately.

"I graduated college and started medical school but-"

"_Buuuuut..." _The Joker interrupted her, cocking his head to the side with a nasty, cheeky grin on his mutilated face. Leila felt a flare of anger lick at her insides; she hated talking about that and knew he could sense it. She chose to be vague, since alas, this was not a real job interview by any means.

"-but I didn't finish." she concluded, intentionally allowing a tone of waspishness to enter her voice. Delightedly, it seemed, the Joker leaned back, once again raising his eyebrows as he glanced down at the paper beside him.

"Hm, _touchy," _he growled, his ventriloquist-style voice once again dropping down into that demonic octave. A split-second later, it shot right back up into the annoyingly clowny, nasally decibel. "SO! You can have the job, but first we gotta establish a few ground rules," He held up a finger to indicate the first. "Rule number one: I am the boss, the Alpha _and _the Omega, your beginning and your _end_. What I say, _goes. _Got it?" Leila nodded, struggling to ignore the sick feeling she got at the words 'your end'.

"Rule number two: You are to keep that cell phone with you _at all times. _In the bathroom, at your _other _job, I mean _everywhe-"_

"Wait, my _other_ job?" Leila couldn't stop herself from cutting in; this was the first ray of hope she had encountered all day. "I can keep my job with the fire department?"

"Well, _duh," _Joker answered, rolling his eyes heavily. "If you up and quit your job there, the fuzz might get suspicious and we can't have that now can we?" Leila shook her head, fighting hard not to sigh in relief. Everything seemed a little brighter all of a sudden. The Joker was going on. "The only person who will ever call that phone is me. If you get a call on it from someone else, that means I'm dead and you're fired. And if you happen to miss or ignore a call from me? You're fired _and _dead, capiche?"

Leila nodded but was noticing one big, gaping flaw in this elaborate plan of the Joker's. What was she supposed to do if he called her while she was in the middle of an urgent call at her 'normal' job? Was she just supposed to abandon Matt and Jay to come to the Joker's rescue? She really could not see that happening without being fired immediately but was currently feeling too relieved to mention it. She was finally working past that ball of anxiety and did not feel like it would be wise for her to bring this up, potentially angering or annoying the man who was showing such 'mercy' by not throttling her to death right then and there. He did not seem like the type to be tested. She would ask about it later.

_"Now," _The Joker was speaking again, rising from his place against the desk to turn and walk toward the door. "Just to be double sure you're up for the job, we need to have a little technical interview, right?" he asked, glancing back over his shoulder to where Leila was still sitting, her eyebrows furrowed slightly in confusion. She shrugged.

"You've already seen me at work," she replied, mildly surprised to find herself speaking to him so casually so early on, remembering back to a few weeks prior when she had to practically force herself to talk to him. "I can't have gotten any worse at what I do since then."

At the door, the Joker let out a low growl of a laugh, causing the hairs on her arms to tingle, but she fought past it, unwilling to let him take the warm calmness she was beginning to feel. He pointed one loose finger at her, arching his eyebrow as he looked back at her over his shoulder. "You may not have gotten worse, but you certainly could have gotten better, miss smarty-pants. Let's go find out."

Withholding a groan, Leila stood up to follow him out of the room, hoisting that heavy bag of equipment along with her and wondering what else he could possibly have in store for her. But as she passed the desk with Joker already at the top of the stairs outside the room, she could not curb her curiosity and simply _had _to find out what he had been reading about her from that piece of paper. Pausing ever so quickly, she leaned to the side to glance at the paper where he had left it on the desk, but only to frown; it was completely blank.

Downstairs, the two guys from a few minutes earlier were still working their way steadily through the six-pack of beer they had brought in, but looked up at the sound of the Joker clapping his hands to get their attention.

"Fellas, this is Doc Hawkin," he announced with a bit more volume than Leila would have liked. Vaguely, she wondered if he was calling her 'doc' because he knew she was not a full doctor and realized that it annoyed her to talk about not completing medical school. _Probably, _she thought sourly, fighting off another hefty eye-roll. "She's interviewing for a very important position on my team and I could use a _little _help. So..." Joker held out one hand wiggling one finger between the two strange men, as though trying to decide which one to pick. "You, come on over here."

The heavier-set of the two men climbed off of the couch, dropping his nearly empty beer bottle to the grimy ground before letting out another poorly suppressed belch. The back of his dirty hand reached up to slide sloppily across the corner of his mouth as he approached, causing Leila's stomach to turn. Why did everyone around the Joker have to be so gross? Was his poor hygiene contagious? There was definitely a hot shower in her very near future; just being in the same room as these men was making her feel itchy and dirty.

"Wh'sup, boss?" the man slurred as he closed in on the Joker and Leila, his eyes somewhat dilated and glossy, giving a little wobble as he came to a halt within only a foot or two of the tall man in purple slacks standing next to her. The Joker glanced down, clearly sizing this goon up, though this action seemed to go unnoticed by the drunk. Leila could feel that sense of foreboding creeping up yet again. Red, scarred lips smacked quietly as Joker frowned slightly at the man's face.

"How much have you had to drink, _friend?"_ he asked, clicking his tongue against the inside of his yellowing teeth. Leila nearly flinched from the sound. Why was she suddenly on edge again? Where had that sense of calmness gone? The man let out a stupid laugh, teetering to the side a bit.

"Kinda lot," he answered lazily. The Joker's hands met together in front of him, his eyebrows raising.

"Ah, that's good," he stated, reaching out to clap the man on his fat shoulder, but did not remove his hand. The drunk's bleary eyes shifted to the side, to where he was being gripped, the smile fading slowly from his face. Leila was sure he could feel the uneasiness she was experiencing. As if to play off the moment of fear, the man chuckled.

"Why's that good?" he asked.

"Because you'll bleed faster," the Joker replied, and several things happened all at the same time.

A glimmering knife had suddenly appeared in the Joker's hand, before it was thrust to the hilt into the man's shoulder, forced in deeply by the opposite hand that was still rested there. Leila jumped with a loud squeal, dropping the bag of equipment to cover her mouth, while the drunken man let out a howl of pain, falling to his knees as the knife was pulled unceremoniously from his skin.

"Clean and dress his wound before time runs out," the Joker was instructing loudly over the man's choking sobs of pain, but his words had not been necessary. Leila was already rushing toward the man, leaning down to hastily dig through the bag for a pair of gloves, which she found sitting at the very top as though someone had planned for this situation in particular. Applying gloves was second nature for her by then so with her hands coated in the familiar blue latex in a matter of milliseconds, she moved toward the man, reaching out to press the heel of her palm flatly against the gushing wound. Somewhere behind her, she heard a tiny beep, like that of a watch or timer but she ignored this, focusing all of her attention on her newest and unexpected patient. She spoke to him calmly and quietly.

"I know it hurts but try to stay still," she told him, ignoring the hot beer breath the man had just blown across her face. "Take deep, even breaths."

Reaching behind her while the bleeding drunk situated himself against the back of the couch, Leila dug blindly for a roll of cotton gauze, tape and a pair of scissors. Her hands stumbled upon a plastic bottle, so she grabbed it as well, praying it would be hydrogen peroxide. The man's shirt was first to be cut once she had located a pair of medical shears. Starting at his sleeve, she cut carefully but quickly up the cotton t-shirt until she reached the gushing stab wound, where she then began to tear at the material, splitting it across his chest and giving her ample space in which to work. The gouge in his shoulder was deep as the Joker had plunged almost the entire knife in, though from what Leila could see, he had not hit any major arteries. Blood was flowing in a thick river down his chest but was not spurting or bubbling, which Leila felt was purely based on luck; she highly doubted the Joker had struck with any sort of intentional accuracy.

As she pressed a thick wad of peroxide soaked gauze to the wound, Leila could feel a heavy presence behind her, could hear the soft tapping of shoes against concrete floors as the Joker circled the scene, humming something out of tune to himself as he watched. Leila hated him in that moment. How could he just stand there after doing this much damage to one person? How could he injure someone so severely purely to see how quickly she did her job? Could he not have just as easily nicked his own arm for that same purpose? _Of course he couldn't..._she thought bitterly, gritting her teeth as she pressed yet another stack of gauze to the wound. _He wouldn't maim himself for something like this. He's too important in his own eyes. _

Fortunately, the bleeding was starting to slow with the pressure she was applying, though Leila was beginning to notice that this man, being as drunk as he was, was growing pale in the face and somewhat lethargic. If he was not taken to the hospital before morning, he would likely exsanguinate and die. Desperately, she turned her head to look up over her shoulder at the Joker, who had ceased his pacing and was now standing directly behind her, staring down at her with a horrible, satisfied grin on his face. She shook her head.

"He _has _to go to a hospital," she implored him. "The wound track is too deep and-"

"Tick- tock, doc," he chimed, rocking his head to both sides as he held up a stopwatch and wiggled it back and forth. "Only thirty seconds...twenty-nine...twenty-eight..."

With a frustrated, livid growl, Leila turned back to the man, reaching out for the roll of medical tape, from which she unrolled a length and tore it off with her teeth, something she would never have done at her _real _job. After tossing the bloodied wad of gauze to the side, she replaced it with a new, thick stack, doubled over with cotton and a large, square bandage, all of which she taped securely over the wound and pressed flat with her hand. She then brought her gaze up to meet the drooped and bloodshot eyes of her patient.

"Keep your hand pressed tightly over this, alright?" she instructed in a voice barely above a whisper. "Try to get to a hospital as soon as you can. Get out of here and call an ambulance if you have to."

"_Aaaaaaand _times up!" Joker exclaimed behind her, his voice followed by the shrill beeping of the stopwatch, just as Leila leaned back. "Well, you managed to get bloody cotton all over my sparkling floors so points off for that..." he was murmuring, kicking aside a wad of gauze. Leila stood up, unsurprised to find that her hands were shaking in both fury and fear over what had just happened, though she remained perfectly still as the Joker turned to her and smirked. "But I guess you did finish in time so...you can have the job!" Both of his arms flew into the air in a celebration that he obviously thought Leila would want to join. When she remained perfectly stationary, merely pointing down at the man against the couch, his animated grin fell quickly into a frown.

"Can you please let him go to a hospital? He's going to die if he doesn't-"

"Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever," he answered distractedly, waving one hand while the other reached into his filthy vest, only to reappear a moment later holding a small handgun. Leila took a hurried step back but the Joker was rolling his eyes. "Oops, wrong pocket," he mumbled, transferring the gun to the pocket of his pants while he continued to grope in the pockets of his vest. Her heart was pounding relentlessly; he wasn't going to shoot her? A few seconds later, he pulled out another, larger stack of one-hundred dollar bills and to her surprise, handed it right to her, grinning ear to ear as she blinked at him in shock. "Your first payment. You got the first five earlier. This is ten, making it an even fifteen grand," he explained.

Leila hesitated. She knew there was a catch, something about this just did not seem right, though at the moment, she could not see what it was. She looked down at the money and took it slowly from his hand, feeling guilty and relieved at the same time, unsure which emotion took precedence. Just as the bills were losing contact with his fingers, however, Leila gave a start of panic when he tightened his grip, preventing her from taking it. His face was suddenly deathly serious, no trace of a grin or otherwise present, aside from his permanent Glasgow smile. His black eyes narrowed on her brown ones.

"Just remember, that by taking this money, there is no backing out. There are no letters of resignation, no 'two-week-notices', no quitting. You get out of this job by one of two things happening," He paused, leaning in slightly and allowing his gaze to bounce back and forth between her eyes. "Either _I _die, or _you _die. Those are the only two retirement plans I offer."

The silence following his words was absolute. Even the stabbing victim on the floor against the couch was quiet as the magnitude of Leila's decision set in once again. It seemed impossible, but the Joker was truly giving her another chance to back out. He was warning her that to work for him meant death or life. He was giving her the opportunity to either risk a life of fear and suspicion yet financial stability or go back to her life of normalcy and yet financial poverty. Leila let her eyes drop from his gaze to the money between them and she took it. The Joker grinned and held out his hand.

"Welcome to the team, doc," he growled, wrapping his fingers around Leila's as she reached out to meet his handshake, gripping the same hand that had just driven a knife hilt-deep into an innocent man's shoulder. She pulled away from his grip quickly as though she had received an electric shock, reaching down to pick up the bag of equipment, into which she dropped her payment, before looking up at him.

"I sincerely hope I don't have to see you again soon," she admitted, causing Joker to let out a loud bark of a laugh.

"Well, aren't you a peach," he chuckled, nodding his head toward the door. "Now scram, I gotta get our friend here to the hospital. We'll be in touch."

Relieved that she was being dismissed but bewildered that the Joker was actually going to take his victim to the hospital, Leila hurried off toward the door, exhaling heavily as she went. Her night was finally over and had not ended as badly as she had been expecting it to. She was being allowed to go home, back to her regular life and regular job, but with a commitment and a large sum of money at her disposal. The urge to smile and let out a whoop of alleviation was unbearable but Leila held it in until she had let herself out of the door through which she had come, where her car was still waiting out in the alley. Only then did she finally smile, mentally running through the things she intended to buy the next day, all the groceries she could stock her pantry with.

Almost the second her fingers made contact with the handle of her car door, a loud gunshot split the night air, forcing a sharp squeak to escape her, sending the bag of equipment to the ground, her hands flying up to cover her head. Though as the seconds went by and no other shots rang out, Leila began to realize that the bullet had not been intended for her. It had come from inside the auto repair shop; an execution. Sick to her stomach and no longer happy in the slightest, Leila leaned forward against her car, her heart pounding relentlessly against her ribcage, taking deep, steadying breaths to try and calm herself. Turning back toward the building, she stared at it, wide-eyed, trembling, feeling the earliest vestiges of hot tears beginning to well up along her lower lashes. What had she gotten herself into?

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A/N: Another long wait! SO SORRY! Again, I hope you enjoyed this chapter as it was a true blast to write, even if it did take me a while (new job and all that). Please leave some reviews if you feel so inclined and stay tuned for the next chapter, coming out sooner this time I PROMISE! Also, feel free to add me on facebook for tons of pictures of the characters (Leila, Matt, Jay and of course, Mister Joker), updates and songs that go with each of the chapters! I also have a closed facebook group for lovers of the Joker called The Man With The Glasgow Smile! Feel free to add me as a homie and I can add you to the group! We'd love to have you! Thanks for reading! -QoM


	8. A New Life

"Leila! How are you, girl?" A stout, older black woman across the salon turned upon hearing the bell chime and instantly, her face was taken over by a startlingly white, toothy smile as Leila stepped in through the front door. Without waiting for an answer, Regina continued, raising her eyebrows at the sight of the frizz framing the young woman's face. "_Lord, _do you need your hair done, honey. Get over here and have a seat."

As Regina tugged a wide-toothed comb through the knots in Leila's unruly hair after she had sat down, she sighed heavily, glancing around at the salon, folding her hands across her stomach beneath the black cape. She had been coming there for so long, since the age of thirteen, yet the place had barely changed from then. The walls were still adorned with the same outdated pictures of smiling black women with ornate hair styles, demonstrations of different types of braids and fades and she was not sure why, but something about the consistency was comforting to her. Almost as though she had been reading Leila's mind, Regina suddenly spoke from behind her.

"I remember the first day you came in here," she said, shaking her head as that broad, dazzling smile appeared on her heavily glossed lips again. "Your mama had _no _idea what to ask for, just said she wanted you to have nice, straight hair."

Leila laughed, rolling her eyes as she thought back to that day. "I didn't know what to ask for either," she answered, picking at a stray fiber of her jeans beneath the cape. "All I knew was that I wanted to have hair like the white girls at my school. I remember one of them telling me my hair felt like a sheep." While Leila laughed, Regina clicked her tongue disapprovingly, shaking her head as she began to separate her hair into four sections at the roots.

"That ain't right," she grumbled. "You musta' been the only mixed girl at that school, huh?"

Leila nodded, grinning as she thought back to the rude, ignorant questions and comments made about her mother being white and her father being black. She shrugged, glancing up at Regina in the mirror. "Yeah, I was," she answered audibly, watching as the hairdresser shook her head again. "But that was a long time ago. They were just kids...probably didn't know any better."

"Mm-hmm...You mean they weren't _taught _any better," Regina answered from behind pursed lips, sounding unconvinced at Leila's attempt to defend the snobby kids at her former private school. She could not blame her for this and had to admit she found the woman's annoyance toward the rich, white girls endearing. "You just remember that you turned out much better than they did, baby," Regina added. The comfortable smile slid slowly from Leila's face. After everything that had occurred the previous night, she was not sure she completely agreed.

All morning, she had been trying to suppress it; the thoughts and memories of that poor, drunk man being stabbed, then mercilessly executed by the Joker, for he had served his purpose and was being disposed of like a dirty tissue. And the knowledge that Leila had been the reason for his death was gnawing at her, filling her with guiltiness. Fifteen thousand dollars should never have been the price for her to abandon her morals and yet, it was. She was in the salon, getting her hair done, pampering herself, something she had been dying to do for over a year with no real means to do it. Now, her bills were about to be completely paid in full, _on time _for once, her fridge would be stocked, her cat would be fed and she would _still _have more than enough left over for whatever the hell else she wanted. All of these reasons were still not enough to justify the man's death in the auto body shop.

But there was nothing she could have done, nothing she could have possibly said to change the Joker's mind about letting the man live. She could have fallen on her knees in front of him, begged him endlessly and all he would have done was laugh in her face, or otherwise kill _her _for being such a pest. Truly, there was absolutely nothing to be done over the nameless man's death. So perhaps, with this in mind, she ought to simply forget it, try to move past it, focus on how fortunate she was to be alive and well, with not one but two jobs...Even though, of course, one was vastly more risky than the other. Hitching a smile onto her face, Leila closed her eyes, sighing deeply as she leaned back in the chair, relaxing under the feeling of the brush applying cool white cream to her scalp.

It took over an hour with much prodding, slathering of stinky chemicals, washing, drying and flat ironing, but finally, Leila's hair was tamed and straight, falling halfway down her back and around her shoulders in sleek, shimmering dark brown waves. Her eyebrows had been waxed and freshly shaped, all traces of frizz were gone from around her face and at long last, she was feeling like herself again. A few times in the chair, she imagined, panicked, that she had heard her 'new' cell phone ringing and had wondered wildly what she would do if the Joker were indeed to call while she was sitting there with chemicals on her hair. How could she explain to Regina that she had to leave right in the middle of the process? However mercifully, the phone had remained silent through the visit. Leila could not imagine what sort of dire trouble he could get into at nine-thirty in the morning, though she was starting to get the feeling that he might just be the type to call her for nothing more than a band-aid. She rolled her eyes. _He would totally do that._

Struggling to resist the urge to continually run her fingers through her sleek, straight hair, she paid Regina with a generous tip and gave her a tight hug, promising that she would not let it go as long next time before returning. And with that, she was back out the door, onto the street and surprisingly, feeling better than she had felt in quite some time. She felt pretty again, confident, and though that nagging guilt in the back of her mind was still present, it was growing easier to ignore. Therefore, she had to wonder, if spending some money on herself had helped assuage some of the guilt, would spending _more _continue to ease her conscience? With a grin and shrug, she decided to find out. The grocery store was next.

It was a truly amazing thing to Leila how different grocery shopping felt without a limit. For once, she could buy whatever she wanted, stock up on the more expensive brands instead of the cheap, generic store brand. Of course there was no real need to buy a tremendous amount of food, seeing how she was the only person living in her apartment and she did not want it to go bad before it could be eaten. Regardless, she filled the metal shopping cart with all the things she liked to cook and snack on, plus several pounds of flour, sugar and other items that she would need in order to start baking again. For too long had she been unable to indulge in her secret hobby and finally, she had to means to pick it back up.

Around twenty minutes and roughly seventy-five dollars into her shopping trip, Leila was passing a meticulously constructed display of soda bottles when she glanced down at her purse in the seat of the cart before her to check the time on her phone, only to have her stomach drop to her knees. Her keys were gone. Stopping on a dime and uttering a breathy curse word, she thrust one hand into the bag, shifting aside both of her phones, her wallet and the other random items, listening for the jingle of metal, but the bag was silent. Slight panic began to flood her at the thought of getting a call from her new boss while her keys were missing and anxiously, she turned to look down the aisle from which she had just come, her eyes scanning the floor for any sign of them. Nothing.

Her heart was banging away painfully at the inside of her chest as she began to retrace her path through the store, keeping her eyes trained on the floor and in turn, almost running into several people along her way. How could they have fallen out from _inside _her purse? Had she moved the bag at all since entering the store? Had she perhaps shifted it to the side in order to fit something in the cart? Any second now, she expected to hear the shrill ring tone of her newest phone and any second after that, she would have to explain to the _Joker _that she could not come immediately to his aid because she had lost her car keys. Somehow, she did not think he would buy the excuse.

With that sense of barely controlled panic becoming overwhelming and after walking through what felt like the entire store, Leila finally stopped at the end of an aisle, forcing herself to stand still, take a deep breath in through her nose, out through her mouth, and think _calmly _about where she could have set the keys down or dropped them. She rested her hands on the cart, closing her eyes to try to visualize where she was the last time she saw them or handled them. However, almost the moment her eyelids had met together, a voice from just behind her caused her to jump with a sharp start. She turned quickly, half expecting to find the tall, daunting frame and painted face of the Joker standing there. Instead, she sighed in relief, placing a hand on her chest when she found an older man.

"Oh, I'm sorry to have startled you, miss," he said, his kind smile wrinkling the lines next to his eyes. "But I think you dropped these." From his pocket, his gnarled hand removed a set of very familiar keys. Laughing at her paranoia, Leila took them, shaking her head.

"Yeah, those are mine," she answered, tucking them deep into the pocket of her jeans. "Thank you so much! Where did you find them?"

The man shrugged, motioning over his shoulder with his thumb toward the refrigerator cases filled with milk. "They were back there on the floor," he answered. "I picked them up and was about to take them to the front desk when I saw you looking around. Glad I found you though! You wouldn't have made it very far without them!" Laughing politely at his cliché joke, Leila nodded.

"That's very true," she answered. "Thanks again, though. Have a good day!"

After the fiasco with her keys, Leila only needed to grab a few more things before she was walking up toward the cash registers, smirking contentedly to herself about how the amount of items in her cart was likely to reach the one-hundred dollar mark with ease...and how she was able to pay for all of it, _with ease._ Despite the small mishap, she was happy to find that she was indeed feeling better about her situation and had all but forgotten about the man in the shop the previous night. Things could only get easier from there, right?

Leila was not sure how she had not thought of it at the grocery store, but carrying a hundred dollars in groceries up six flights of stairs was no easy task. Sure, her building contained an elevator, but it was located on the farthest opposite corner and she could not see the point in walking that far with her groceries when the stairs were right at the entrance to the parking garage. Five flights up, however, she began to regret that decision, as she was huffing and puffing in a way she had not experienced in quite a while.

"Good thing I can afford a gym membership now..." she grumbled aloud to herself as she hoisted her bags up the last few stairs.

At the door to her apartment at last, Leila stopped, dropping one handful of bags to the floor to reach for her keys, once again mentally thanking the older man who had found them for her and hoping that wherever he was, he would have a good day as karma's repayment for helping her. Thumbing through the keys and shifting them around in her hand allowed her to select the one belonging to her front door, but just as she began to push it into the lock, she frowned when it stopped halfway in and stuck as though it had caught on something. She pulled the key back out, her frown deepening when she lifted it toward her face, where her eyes caught sight of a small chunk of something white trapped in one of the grooves of the metal. Sighing, but not allowing _anything _to ruin her good mood, she set the rest of her bags down on the ground to give her the use of both hands.

The white chunk was hard as a rock and seemed to be positively melded to the metal, stuck between two rivets as though placed there by force. Using her fingernail, Leila attempted to pick it away from the key. Surprisingly, it came away without much force and fell to the ground at her feet, where she stared down at it for a moment, confused. Another half second later, she shrugged and pushed her newly functional key into the lock where it turned easily, deciding she really did not care what the white stuff was. Her keys had been on the floor of the grocery store for who knew how long and had been in the pocket of an older man shortly after. There was a good chance that it was something gross. She would have to wash her hands as soon as she was inside the apartment.

The inside of Leila's apartment somehow felt cleaner, nicer, prettier despite the lack of attention and as she put away her groceries, she found herself humming a tune, wondering delightedly whether she had time to do a little cleaning before having to leave for work at two-thirty. A moment later, she let out a short laugh as Murphy wound his way between her ankles. There would be plenty of time for cleaning the next day when she was off, so she figured it could wait until then. All she wanted to do was have a nice, quiet lunch and make a list of the clothes she wanted to buy. Three o'clock would arrive quickly and she would be damned if she did any physical labor before doing _more _physical labor during her shift that night.

Getting dressed in her uniform did not seem like such a chore, feeding Murphy did not make her mildly depressed as it usually did, even the drive to the station house did not seem to take as long, and Leila was climbing out of her car, smirking contentedly to herself when Matt rounded the back of his Jeep in the parking space next to her. He sighed heavily, dragging his hands along his stubbled cheeks. Leila arched an eyebrow as she pulled her bag from the back seat, taking in the sight of his untucked, somewhat wrinkled uniform shirt and uncharacteristically pomade-free hair.

"What happened to you?" she asked, turning to walk alongside him toward the docking bay, where both could see Jay climbing down from the back of the ambulance. Matt shook his head, a rather sick look coming across his face and only then did Leila notice that he looked a bit pale.

"I went out last night..." he grumbled, using the knuckle of his middle finger to push his heavily tinted sunglasses further up his nose. "Woke up about an hour ago. Hungover...Stupid decision, I know..."

Leila laughed with a bit more gusto than usual, reaching up a hand to pat him on the shoulder. "Hey, you said it, not me."

As the pair approached the waiting ambulance, Jay stepped out from behind the open door to the cab, his hands on his narrow waist. He was grinning from ear to ear as he noticed the 'not to be messed with' look on Matt's face. Leila mimicked Jay's expression, suddenly finding everything much more funny than normal.

"Good morning, sunshine!" Jay exclaimed using more volume than was necessary. Matt flinched at the noise, squinting from behind his shades.

"No way, man...Don't start-" Matt began to reply in a gruff voice, but Jay was already continuing, glancing up at the high ceiling above them contemplatively.

"Let's see..." he began, drumming his fingers against the patch on the sleeve of his uniform shirt. Leila leaned against the ambulance, crossing her arms over her middle. "Hot mayonnaise on week-old lettuce." Jay concluded, and almost the moment the words finished leaving his mouth, Matt let out a loud gag and doubled over the nearby, large biohazardous trash can, causing both Jay and Leila to groan, laughing at the sound of stale liquor hitting the bottom of the bag. Matt stood up straight a few moments later, spitting once more into the can.

"Dude..." he mumbled, shaking his head. "Not fair..."

Jay shrugged, glancing over at Leila with a very innocent, unconcerned look on his face. "Judging by how pale you looked, I used my medical knowledge to deduce that you had not vomited up the liquor yet. So by inducing that function, you should be feeling better within a few minutes," There was a pause after his words before he shrugged again, looking over at Matt, who was now glaring at Leila as though daring her to agree with Jay. She copied his shrug, raising her eyebrows at Matt.

"He's right," she told him, laughing as she stood up straight to step forward and take his arm. "But you still need to drink some water. Come put your bag away and I'll get you a bottle."

After putting their bags away and after Matt had emptied his stomach a second time in the bathroom, Leila supplied him with water before both exited out into the docking bay, where Jay was climbing into the front seat of the ambulance. Luckily, Matt seemed to have overcome his nausea but was drinking steadily from his bottle of water as he and Leila took their usual places in the truck. He sighed, leaning back against the cabinet behind the bench seat while Leila slammed shut the doors. She could feel him eyeballing the side of her face as she sat back down but refrained from looking over until he spoke.

"So you seem...chipper today," he commented offhandedly. Leila could not deny the hint of suspicion she heard in his tone of voice, but once again wondered if she was just perhaps being paranoid. In an effort to appear as her normal self, she shrugged, finally turning her head to look over at him.

"Do I?" she asked, arching an eyebrow. "Are you sure it's not that you're feeling really bad and everyone around you just seems happier than usual?" Leila laughed at the slightly surprised, taken-aback look on Matt's face as he contemplated her words, and his eyebrows bounced a moment later when he shook his head, taking another swig of his water.

"You're probably right," he grunted, closing his eyes as he crossed his hands over his thoroughly empty stomach. "I just hope we have a slow night. Anything too strenuous and _I_ might be on that stretcher."

It seemed surprising for a weekend night, but Matt's words were almost prophetic in predicting how slow their night turned out to be. They had one minor call in their district for a case of dehydration and subsequent fainting, but beyond this, the team was almost what they could call bored. The time was slowly inching toward nine-thirty and the ambulance had just rounded the same corner for a third time when Matt let out a loud yawn, leaning to the side to bang hard on the small window separating the back of the truck to the cab in the front. Jay gave a jump in the driver's seat before glancing over his shoulder quickly at the window. He rolled his eyes, reaching forward to take the small hand radio from the dashboard. The inside of the large back cabin rang with a crackle of static before Jay's voice broke through.

"You know you guys have a radio back there..." he said. Leila laughed, watching as Matt rolled his eyes, rising from the bench seat to take the other end of the radio from the upper corner of the wall.

"I'm hungry," he stated loudly into the speaker of the radio, causing Leila to laugh again harder as they saw Jay start in surprise through the window at the volume of Matt's voice.

"Yeah, I bet you are, Princess Puke Pants," Jay answered. "You guys want to run by the diner for a bite?"

Of course, Matt's immediate answer was yes, and since Leila didn't care either way, the ambulance was soon heading in the direction of their favorite work-time standby, the 59th street diner, where, as they climbed out, Matt was already talking about what he wanted to eat.

"I am _starving,"_ he groaned, massaging his growling stomach as they walked toward the front doors of the small restaurant. "I swear, if we get a call right now, that person will just have to wait because I could seriously eat one of the tires off the truck."

The same frizzy-haired waitress, as always, greeted them at their table once the team had sat down, clicking her pen several times out of habit as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, chewing noisily on a piece of gum.

"Hey, guys," she said, poising her pen in preparation to write. "The usual for the three of ya?"

Matt looked up at her without even glancing at his menu, sliding it toward her along the table. "I'll have the number three with a coke, please, Stephanie," he told her, using the characteristic, charming, slick voice and flashing the toothy, sparkling smile that made both Jay and Leila fight not to roll their eyes. Stephanie spent a second longer than usual returning his grin before glancing down at Leila.

"Chili for you, hon'? Hold the sour cream?" she asked. Leila felt her teeth grit together in the back of her mouth as she nodded with a forced smile; if there was one thing she hated, it was pet names, especially from someone she did not know that well. Luckily, the waitress was gone only seconds later after taking Jay's order, leaving Leila to finally roll her eyes in her absence. Matt laughed.

"You really hate it when people use nicknames, don't you?" he asked, fidgeting with the corner of his paper napkin under the stress of his hunger. Leila shook her head, hanging it slightly and joining his laugh.

"Pretty much," she answered. "I don't know why either. It just annoys me. That girl barely knows me beyond what I like to eat here but feels the need to call me 'hon' and 'sweetie'." She laughed again, tossing one hand as she glanced over her shoulder to make double sure Stephanie wasn't approaching behind her. "I'm probably at least seven or eight years old her than her. If anything, I should be the one calling _her _'honey' and 'munchkin' or whatever..."

While the two guys laughed, Stephanie returned momentarily to place their three drinks on the table, before leaving the team alone once again. Simultaneously, the paramedics took sips of their sodas, but once they were replaced in front of them, Matt was the first to speak.

"So Leila," he began, folding his hands together atop the table before him and leaning forward slightly as though he were about to begin an interrogation. She felt her stomach sink but did not allow this sensation to convey itself on her face. "I'm feeling better now and you _still _seem more...upbeat than usual." Leila's stomach sank even further; she had so been hoping he would not bring that up again. To her dismay, on Matt's right side, Jay was nodding his agreement.

"Yeah, I noticed that too," he added to the conversation. "I just thought you were taking pleasure in Matt's misery but you _do_ seem different." At this, Leila managed a laugh, shrugging her shoulders.

"I don't see how I'm acting any differently than I normally do, guys," she answered, taking another sip of her Sprite that she did not entirely want. "I'm just in a good mood today, I guess."

Matt nodded, reaching out for his plastic cup of coke, seemingly satisfied with her answer, but Jay went on, grinning cheekily at her as he leaned toward her by a few inches across the table. "Is there a new guy in your life?" he asked, dropping his voice. Next to him, Matt coughed into his soda while Leila laughed, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. _You could say that..._she thought somewhat miserably, thinking of the small, mercifully quiet cell phone in the velcro pocket of her black cargo pants. Sometime over the past two seconds, Matt's eyes had grown rather wider than usual and as Leila glanced back and forth between her two friends and co-workers, she tossed her hands.

"Guys, there is no 'new guy' in my life, nothing has changed or anything like that," she implored them, grinning. "Honestly, I'm just having a good day! If something major happened, you two would already know about it." A little drop of guilt sank down into the pit of her growling stomach.

By the time the team finished eating, chatting and laughing their way through several topics, the time was nearing ten-thirty, which would give them just enough time to pay for their meals and head back to the station house before their shift was due to end. Leila was slightly relieved at this. Her evening at work had been more fun than usual, but she could not pretend like Matt and Jay's questioning of her newly obtained happy-go-lucky mood did not shake her. It wasn't as though she had been a total misery in the past, but if they had noticed such a change in her overnight, after she had obtained money from the Joker, surely they were bound to start asking questions if this continued. She would have to remember to remain as normal as possible over the next week, at least until the thrill of having so much money had worn off.

At the door to her apartment, Leila sighed, shaking her head as she remembered the loud '_Say hi to your new boyfriend from us!' _Jay had shouted to her across the parking lot while climbing into her car back at the station house. She knew there would be further questioning down the road, so she figured, in order to keep their suspicions in one place, she might as well just let them believe that she was indeed dating someone. Perhaps that would be enough to keep the guys convinced that this was the reason behind her new, more upbeat demeanor. Fortunately, she was off from work the next day. Hopefully, she thought, the guys would forget all about their idea that she 'had a new man in her life'.

Murphy was in almost the exact same position as she had left him earlier, laying flat on his back in the middle of her bed with his fat belly spread out, comfortable as could be. Leila sighed, grinning as she approached him, dropping her bag lazily at the door to her room and flinging herself onto the bed beside him. Her hand met his tummy gently with a few quiet thumps as she patted him there, her smile widening when the cat gave off a tiny mew and stretched his paws out.

"Hey buddy, have a good day?" she asked him, stroking her hand along his soft fur. When Murphy simply blinked serenely up at her, Leila sat up, sighing as she dug around her pocket for her normal, personal phone, to check up on what sort of messages she had received over the past nine hours.

First on the screen was a missed call from her mother, along with a voice mail. Leila grinned, using her thumb to locate the correct button on the touch screen to listen to it.

"_Hey LeeLee, it's Mom! Just wanted to call and check up on how you're doing. Passed an ambulance on my way home and I honked at it, but I don't think it was you..." _Leila let out a laugh at her mother's ever-growing level of cuteness. _"Anyways, call me back tomorrow and let's get lunch or something, okay? My treat! Love you!" _

Glancing at the time and seeing that it was only eleven-thirty, she figured her mother would still be awake if she had been driving home a half hour ago, so without hesitation, she swiped her thumb across the screen, highlighting the number to her mom's phone. However, almost the moment the screen switched to show the words _'dialing...Mom', _she jumped, gasping in surprise as yet another phone began ringing in her apartment, very close to her.

For just a split second, Leila's brain somehow managed to form the incoherent thought that she had dialed her _own _phone, until she realized that the shrill, high-pitched tone did not belong to any device she owned. The ringing was coming from the velcro pocket of her black pants. Her heart was racing as she quickly ended the call going to her mother's phone and instead hastily fumbled to undo the pocket. The small black phone's screen read the word 'Unknown'. Her mouth was suddenly dry.

"H-hello?"

There was a pause.

"Hey there, _doc," _came the horrible, nasally, clowny voice of the Joker, crooning and rasping to her through the speaker. "Have a lovely day of being _filthy_ rich?"

Leila shuddered openly, closing her eyes in disgust at the vehement way he had just spat the word '_filthy' _in her ear. She ignored his question, hoping to get straight to the point.

"Is something wrong?" she asked rather more timidly that she had meant to. "Do you need me?"

"Oh!" Joker exclaimed through the other end of the phone. "No, no...Just calling to check up on ya...curious to see if you would answer..."

There was another pregnant pause wherein Leila's eyebrows contracted across her forehead. She licked her lips, struggling to force more moisture to her mouth.

"Well...I did. You said you'd kill me if I didn't," she answered, dropping her voice into a very mirthless level. There was a soft click on the other end of the call; Leila could just imagine him leaning back in whatever chair he had situated himself in, ticking his tongue against the back of his yellowing teeth in a very amused sort of way.

"Indeed I did," he answered after a few seconds, his voice no longer bearing any hint of clowniness and instead rumbling out of him from what seemed like the deepest reaches of his lungs. Goosebumps spread all over Leila's arms. "_Anyway," _His tone was high and bouncy once again. "Have a great night, peaches. I'm sure we'll be in touch soon."

_Click. _

Pulling the phone away from her ear, Leila leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees, closing her eyes as her head hung forward. Maybe the call back to her mother could wait until the following day.

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A/N: Guys, I totally suck for the long wait. -_- I am sorry. I have no excuses beyond life getting in the way. But alas, this is a short, somewhat uneventful chapter though it was necessary as set up for the next few chapters. Lots of Joker in the following chapters, plus some funny stuff, plus some mounting sexual sexy tension so I'm hoping you all will forgive me for the long wait and lame chapter because you will LOVE the next ones. I PROMISE! = ] Thanks so much for reading, and as always, feel free to leave me your love or hate! -QoM


	9. Unexpected Company

Disclaimer: I, the author, am not racist in any way shape or form. Any slight on Leila, or her family's races are purely for the purpose of the story and do not express my own personal views.

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The inside of the Brightside shopping center was packed, even for a Friday before noon. Leila had already battled the hordes in the parking lot, all struggling for the same prized, twenty parking spaces closest to the front doors. It was another swelteringly muggy day so Leila could not blame the people for desiring a shorter walk, though she had to admit, she wished there were less of them to fight against. After making it inside and dodging an elderly couple moseying their way slowly through the first corridor of shops, Leila was on her way at a brisk pace, wanting to spend some money on clothes, but also wanting to spend very little time doing so. She had arranged a lunch date with her mother for one o'clock, which left her with just over an hour.

It had been a week and two days since she had heard from the Joker, which was the only reason Leila felt comfortable finally calling her mom back and agreeing to meet. He had not called her phone, nor made an appearance, and Leila had begun to wonder somewhat dreamily if he had died or been arrested. Part of her sincerely hoped this was the case, but another, frustratingly larger part of her hoped that he _and _his money were safe and sound. If she was about to blow a thousand dollars on nothing but clothes, she certainly prayed there would be more where it came from.

Around forty-five minutes later, Leila was on her way back out of the mall, two large paper bags bouncing against her legs and a smile perched on her face. As was usually the case for Leila, the first store had been a bust as far as finding jeans and pants went. Standing at five foot, ten inches and most of her height coming from her legs, finding jeans or pants that were long enough for her was next to impossible, so the fact that she had actually found several pairs that fit perfectly was something of a miracle. It had been so long, so painfully long since she had been shopping for herself and although she had already tried on all of the purchased clothing in the store, she could not wait to get home and try them on again, mixing and matching the various tops and pants to see what outfits she could come up with. However, she was due for lunch with Cindy Hawkin, so the 'home fashion show' would have to wait.

Upon climbing into her car, Leila hesitated, glancing over to the passenger seat where she had placed the two bags of clothing, thinking of the possibility that her mother may spot them through the window, ask her if she could see what she had bought, then perhaps wonder suspiciously to herself how her daughter had managed to afford such an extravagant shopping spree. Leila blinked, staring at the bags, wondering if she was being paranoid. Regardless, she felt she ought to take precaution wherever possible, as she had been doing at work for the past week. Grabbing the bags, she got back out of the car and proceeded to the trunk, figuring there they would be hidden from her mother's attentive eyes.

The mother and daughter had chosen a small cafe relatively close to both of their buildings, where, as Leila parked, she could see a small crowd of people milling about outside, either waiting for a table or leaving; she hoped it was the latter circumstance. Getting out of her car with her purse tucked securely against her ribs, Leila glanced up and down the street, looking both ways for any sign of her mother. As usual, she did not have to wait long before the characteristically bubbly voice of Cindy came calling to her from some presently unseen location.

"Leila!" came the squeal. She turned her head toward the direction of the cafe and the group of people standing outside, where she could see her mother, bouncing on the toes of her beige heels, waving with much more enthusiasm than was necessary. Leila felt a grin slide onto her face. As a teenager, she had thought Cindy's flamboyant, eager ways were the height of embarrassing, often hissing strong pleas of '_Mom! Stop!'_ whenever the woman greeted her friends. However, now at the age of twenty-seven, Leila thought she was absolutely adorable and would not have her change for anything in the world. Smiling, she waved back at her mom, though with a little less gusto.

"Hey," she greeted her once she had grown close enough to be heard without having to raise her voice. "Been here-" she paused, turning her head and leaning down slightly to receive the customary peck on the cheek and rib-cracking hug. "-Been here long?"

Pulling back from the hug and readjusting the strap of her expensive purse, Cindy waved a hand airily. "Oh, no," she answered, smiling. "I'd just walked up when I spotted you. Hungry?" Leila nodded, glancing to the inside of the crowded cafe through the glass front doors.

"Starving," she answered, but then motioned toward the doors with her thumb. "Is there a wait?"

With a smile that spoke plainly of pride and accomplishment, Cindy shook her head. "No, because your dear old mom thought to call ahead and put our names in for a table! Aren't I the smartest?"

Leila laughed, nodding her head as she fitted her hand into the crook of her mom's elbow, to turn her toward the doors. "Yes, you are," she answered. "And good thing too. Dad's kind of a dunce, isn't he?" Both women shared a laugh, bumping elbows with strangers as they wound their way into the restaurant.

Once seated and after both had ordered one of the cafe's famous sandwiches, Cindy looked across to Leila, examining her appearance as was customary. Leila quickly glanced at her surroundings, hurriedly casting around for something to distract her mother's attention, before-

"So you _finally _got your hair done, I see," she commented in what Leila could never mistake as an offhanded sort of tone. "I bet Regina was appalled by how bad it was." Cindy concluded with a chuckle. Leila rolled her eyes, resting her forearms on the table before her.

"Yeah, I did and yeah, she was," she answered, distractedly wiping her finger along the sweat collecting on the outside of her glass of water. "She made me promise I wouldn't let it go as long next time."

"Rightfully so!" Cindy exclaimed, wagging a very school teacher-like finger in Leila's direction. "It looked _awful." _Cutting over Leila's groan, she continued. "So how is work? How is Matt?"

This question earned her another heavy eye-rolling as Leila leaned back in her chair. "I love how you ask me an innocent question about work, then immediately follow it up with a loaded question about my co-worker," she grumbled, tossing one of her hands. "Very subtle, Mom..." Across the table, Cindy's face broke into a falsely astonished look of innocence.

"How is asking about Matt a loaded question?" she asked. "I just-"

"Because ever since you first met him a year ago, you've had this misplaced idea in your head that he and I are _destined _to be together," Leila answered, lowering her voice. "He asked me out _one _time. I said no. That's _all _that happened."

As she took a resigned sip of her sparkling water, Cindy's eyebrows rose behind the rim of her glass ever so slightly. "Well...I _still _think you should have said yes. You two would be so cute-"

"_Mom, stop..." _Leila begged, leaning forward to rub her temples with two fingers from each hand.

"Oh!" Cindy suddenly started, clearly having remembered something she wanted to mention. Leila knew better; she was trying to change the subject. "Dad wanted me to tell you that the hospital's fundraiser is on the twenty-seventh and he would like you to come!" she exclaimed excitedly, grinning from ear to ear while Leila's expression remained quite blank. She cleared her throat, taking an unnecessary sip from her water.

"He does?" she asked, once she had put down her glass and her mother's look of excitement had not changed. "Well...Where is it?"

"They're holding it _at _Gotham Municipal," Cindy explained, glancing upward at their waiter as he appeared at the table, holding their plates. "It's apparently a 'game night' theme. You know, with poker tables, Black Jack, all that," She glanced over at her daughter, but only to catch Leila sighing heavily with a bounce of her eyebrows. Cindy sighed. "Oh, come on, Leila, it'll be fun! I'm going! Even if you just stay for a half hour, Dad will be glad you came."

"Fine, I'll come," Leila eventually heard herself say. "But I probably won't stay long!" she added quickly when her mother gave a quiet squeal of happiness.

With both sandwiches eaten, enjoyed and the bill paid by Cindy after a silly argument over allowing Leila to pay for her own, the mother and daughter were parting ways on the street in front of the cafe. They hugged tightly for a moment before pulling back to arm's length, where Cindy squeezed Leila's elbows in an imploring sort of way.

"_Please _call me more often, sweetie," she said, smiling up at her tall daughter. "Dad and I really do miss hearing from you."

Leila nodded, smiling serenely, though the ever present knot in her stomach tightened once again. She could not make any promises.

Back at her apartment after retrieving the bags of clothing from her trunk, Leila supplied Murphy with a fresh bowl of water and a small snack of kibble before retiring to her bedroom, where her full length body mirror stood against the wall next to the bathroom. In an effort to prevent her new clothes from collecting more cat hair than was actually attached to Murphy, she left them in the bag but began digging through them until she had located the pair of pants she had been most eager to try on again. She grinned happily to herself as she pulled them from the bag, extending her arms out in front of her to inspect the faded, acid-wash denim under a different light.

It turned out that her new favorite pair of jeans coordinated best with one of the plain black tops she had bought, but instead of removing them and putting them away in her dresser, Leila decided to wear them around the house while she baked a batch of cookies, just because she could. The tag from the shirt was discarded and left lying on the breakfast bar, where Murphy decided the plastic piece looked terribly fun. For a few moments, Leila stood there watching him bat it until she remembered the butter she had left out to soften earlier that morning.

While combining the ingredients, Leila had been infinitely careful not to get any flour, egg or baking powder on her new clothes and had succeeded much to her surprise, though there was plenty of it tossed haphazardly along the kitchen counters. Normally, she would have stopped right then to clean it up, but since the cookies were already dished out, baking away steadily in the oven and she was dying to apply a bit of makeup for fun, she left it, instead retiring to her bedroom and the bathroom beyond it. She clicked her tongue a few times, calling for Murphy to follow and keep her company.

The speakers on her phone were not fantastic, but as Leila stood in her bathroom mirror with her mouth hanging open, carefully lining her eyes with a thin layer of eyeliner, her favorite music was playing, echoing against the tile of the shower beyond her. One eye looked great by the time the song changed, though Leila knew better than to think she could get the other one to match perfectly. Capping her eyeliner and deciding to remove a bit of the black from the eye she had just finished, Leila let her head bob slightly to the reggae song that had come on, watching as she carefully wound a tissue around the tip of her finger.

Almost the second she had reached up to touch the tip of the thin paper tissue to the corner of her eye, Leila frowned, straightening up as she glanced down at her phone. She had heard the song that was playing many times before but had never noticed the sound she had just heard coming from her phone. It was quiet, almost unnoticeable, something like a faint squeak, followed by a click...

Then her heart stopped. The sound was not part of the song. It had been her front door.

Her heart was racing as she fumbled quickly for her phone to shut off the music, flinging her hand to rid her finger of the tissue before the bathroom fell silent. Breathing deeply and slowly to calm herself, Leila listened hard for any sounds coming from her bedroom or the rest of the apartment beyond. It was completely silent, but if she had never experienced it before, she might not have noticed the sensation for what it was. Beneath the silence was something more sinister, something she recognized immediately, something that caused cold chills to run down her spine.

Taking a cautious step forward into her bedroom, Leila forcibly ignored the hair rising along her arms, leaning forward to try and see around the corner toward her kitchen. A frown mangled her features. It did not appear that anyone was out there, though Leila was absolutely certain she had heard her front door open and close again. She _knew _she had locked it behind her upon returning from lunch and yet someone had come in, having obviously unlocked it from the outside. But how could they? Leila was the only person with a key, besides her landlord, and wouldn't he have knocked first? At least she _thought _she was the only person with a key...

Deciding that if she had encountered the Joker before and survived, she could take on whoever had just broken into her apartment, Leila took deep breath and launched herself around the corner into the short hallway leading from the front door to the inner living area of the unit. She stopped dead in her tracks, frowning, glancing sideways into the kitchen on her left. Both were empty. Turning, she proceeded into her living room, but only to inhale a sharp gasp of shock.

He was there, standing in the middle of her apartment, his scarred face tangled in something of a cheery grin. Before he could speak, Leila beat him to it.

"What are you doing here?" she asked in a surprisingly level voice, staring at the Joker, appalled that he was actually standing in the one place she felt mildly safe. Across from her, he took a step or two closer, shrugging his broad shoulders, which she briefly noticed were not covered by his purple coat.

"I was in the neighborhood," he answered, his clowny, casual voice rocketing another dose of chills up her spine. "Thought I'd stop in and check on my favorite-"

Whatever he was about to call her, Leila never did find out as within the blink of an eye, the Joker had crossed the few feet of space between them, grabbing her by the arms and pushing her back until her shoulder blades made sharp contact with the wall next to the open doorway to her bedroom. His face was suddenly deathly and serious, no trace of a grin, sarcastic or otherwise. His black-ringed eyes widened slightly, dilated as he leaned in toward her face, holding a glinting switchblade knife at her side. Leila attempted to put more distance between them by plastering the back half her body against the wall behind her and sucking in her stomach.

"You already have company, hm?" he asked in a deep voice barely above a whisper, his eyes flickering toward the doorway on her right. "How rude of me to intrude..."

Leila shook her head frantically, swallowing hard, wondering what on earth he could have heard that she did not. "Company?" she repeated in a dry croak, balling her hands into fists at her side in preparation to fight back in whatever way possible. "There's no one here but me! I swear!"

Never before then had she truly noticed how terrifyingly tall the Joker was, looming over her; he had to be at least six foot, three or four. His eyebrows rose, stretching the black around his eyes. "No?" he asked in that same low, quiet voice. "Then who am I hearing in your _bedroom_?"

The moment of finally understanding what had set him off came as such a relief that Leila nearly let out a laugh. She shook her head instead, using her right, pinned arm to motion into her bedroom. "It's my cat, Joker, I swear to god! Look," At that, Leila used her tongue to make the soft clicking noise that often attracted her pet, glancing up at Joker's face as he frowned down at her. _Please come out here, Murph..._she thought desperately. _Please..._

The sight of her cat meandering slowly and nonchalantly through the doorway had never been so welcome in all the time she had owned him. Breathing a sigh of relief, Leila motioned at Murphy with her hand. "See?" she asked, glancing up at Joker's face to see if he was seeing the animal, which apparently, he was, judging by the deep scowl that was currently causing his jagged scars to pucker slightly. Leila practically held her breath, letting her eyes bounce all over the side of the Joker's face above her, until _finally _he moved the hand holding the knife away from her, jabbing it twice in Murphy's direction.

"It's fat," Joker stated baldly. Leila tutted, frowning, but could not force her eyes away from the knife still rested in his purple glove.

"He's not _that _fat," she countered, unable to wrap her mind around the fact that she was really standing there, defending her cat's weight to the most wanted criminal in the country.

"He just-" She went on, but paused, staring down at the ground as, to her utter surprise, Murphy let out a quiet mew and began to wind his way between Joker's ankles, rubbing his chubby gray sides against the purple pinstriped material. Leila blinked. "-likes you..." she concluded her previous statement with a thoroughly astonished shake of her head.

Across from her, Joker laughed loudly and took a step back, using one of his brown shoes to nudge the cat away from him. "And here I thought animals could sense evil or whatever," he said, holding out both hands and wiggling his gloved fingers with a roll of his eyes. Leila nodded, struggling not to let out a loud sigh of relief as Joker replaced his knife in the pocket of his pants.

"I did too," she answered, glancing over at toward the kitchen as the timer on her microwave dinged, indicating that the cookies were done. Figuring that she was being allowed to walk away from him, she did so with haste, moving toward the kitchen to open the oven. To her dismay, Joker followed.

"Your cat must be defective," he said, pausing in the doorway of the kitchen to lean against it and fold his arms across his smudged, green vest. "I can uh..._dispose _of it if you want."

Feeling mildly more comfortable with his presence now that he was more than three feet away from her, Leila cast him a dark look as she pulled both trays of cookies from the oven. "No, thank you. I'm happy with my cat the way he is," she answered sternly. "...Even if his judgment is a little...flawed."

Across the kitchen, Joker held up both hands defensively as he stood to his full height. "Hey, it was just a friendly offer, doc," he said, disappearing from sight momentarily before reappearing on the other side of the breakfast bar. Leila turned to face him, that frown from a minute earlier returning to tug downward on the corners of her lips as she watched him remove his gloves. The apartment grew very quiet and the Joker had just looked up in confusion at her descent into silence when-

"How did you get in here?!" Leila asked this question with much more volume and vehemence than she had intended, so much so that Joker gave a dramatic jump of surprise, holding up both of his large, bare hands.

"With my _key,_" he answered calmly, reaching into an inside pocket of his vest to produce a sparse ring of metal keys. He jingled them on the end of his finger. "Like all_ normal_ people, _duh._"

Leila's frown deepened as she placed one hand on her hip. "But how did you get a key? I only have one and it's-" she paused, her mind spinning as a very mischievous, shitty grin began to form on Joker's face. "You..."

"_I..."_ Joker repeated her in his characteristically raspy voice, leaning forward over the counter to pluck a hot cookie from the tray.

"...made a copy of my..."

"-_key...while you were..." _He broke the cookie in half slowly, watching the melted, gooey chocolate chips separate.

"At the grocery store last week!" Leila finally exclaimed, slapping her hand on the counter beside her. "That old guy that found my keys! He did it, didn't he?!" she demanded loudly, suddenly angry that she had been so grateful to the elderly man at the time.

Joker swallowed one whole half of the cookie before he answered, holding up a finger. "Ah...'_Found _your keys'?" he asked, smirking. "Or do you mean '_stole _your keys'..."

The indignant look on Leila's face deepened as her jaw dropped. "He _did _steal my keys! He works for you?" she asked, watching as Joker swallowed the other half of the cookie he had taken before he nodded.

"Yep," he answered proudly. "And I bet you thought he was just a sweet, old man, didn't you?"

Shaking her head, Leila turned her back to him, reaching out to turn her oven off. "Just goes to show...can't trust anyone anymore. I thought he was a nice man, helping me out. Never would have guessed he was a _criminal..._" she was grumbling more to herself than to Joker, but it seemed he had heard her as he let out a low grumble of a laugh behind her.

"Makes ya wonder if people will think the same thing about _you, _huh?"

Leila's stomach plummeted to her ankles. He was right. She was no better than that old man in the store. Pushing past this moment of internal unpleasantness, she turned back to the breakfast bar, but only to find that he had walked away, into the living room where he was standing with his hands on his narrow waist, staring around at her furniture and flat screen television. His lips smacked together as he scowled at her collection of DVD's.

"Pretty nice digs for a poor little pauper like you," he commented, turning his head toward her with one eyebrow arched. "How'd you manage a place like this on your lowly paramedic salary?"

Lowering her head, Leila pretended to focus on rinsing out her mixing bowl. This topic was never something she liked to discuss and normally, she would have avoided answering or even lied to forgo telling the entire truth. But it was the Joker. She had the feeling he was rather adept at detecting an untruth. She cleared her throat before answering, keeping her voice quiet in the hope that he might mishear her.

"My dad-" she began but jumped when Joker called out a loud 'HUH?' from the other side of the room. She started again, with more volume. "My dad got me this place for finishing my EMT training!" Leila practically shouted.

"_O-o-o-o-h..._I see," he replied, a hint of unmistakable delight in his voice that his question had obviously annoyed her. "So daddy's a rich guy, I take it?" Joker asked, dropping down onto her couch heavily to cross his scuffed and filthy shoes on her coffee table before him.

Leila spared a disgusted look at his casual, invading pose before shrugging her shoulders, picking at a spot on the wet bowl in the sink; she prayed her couch would not smell like him once he got up. "I guess so," she muttered evasively. There was a contemplative hum on the couch across the room.

"What flavor are you anyway?" Joker's obnoxious voice once again called out a few seconds later. "Some kinda Asian?"

Leila's teeth gritted together in the back of her mouth, struggling not to roll her eyes at his crass question. "I _assume _you're asking what my _race _is, right?" she asked, glancing over in time to see Joker wave his hand dismissively. "I'm mulatto," Leila explained, finally pulling the clean bowl out of the sink to place it in the dishwasher. "Mixed race."

Over on the couch, Joker turned toward her, his eyebrows raised in what looked to be interest. "Ooooh, _do tell," _he insisted, rising to his feet to walk back toward the kitchen, once again stopping in the doorway, where he stood watching Leila continue to load the washer. "Is mommy black? Or is it daddy?"

Leila hesitated, wondering for a split second whether she ought to lie, make it harder for him to find out who her parents were, assuming of course that he did not already know. Though there was every chance he could have been testing her to see if she would do exactly that. Taking a deep breath, she stood up after closing the dishwasher, drying her hands on a towel.

"My mom is white," she answered, resigned. "My dad is black."

"_Ahhhh..._It all makes sense now.." Joker growled, closing the distance by taking two steps toward her where she stood at the sink with her side toward him.

She frowned, fighting to ignore his attempt at creeping her out, despite the fact that it was working. "What makes sense?" she asked, forcing her tone to remain level. Joker stopped mere inches from her left side, his black eyes examining the profile of her face.

"It makes sense to me now how you managed to keep some meat on your bones being as poor as you were," he elaborated. Leila jumped when two of his fingers suddenly reached out to pinch a fold of skin at her curvy side. "Daddy's black genes keep you thick."

Before Leila could stop herself, before the rational half of her brain could scream at her not to react to what was a blatant attempt to anger her, her right hand swung around, fully prepared to make contact with his cheek in a slap. However, in an instant, her swing was stopped, caught in midair by the Joker's left hand, his long fingers wrapped completely around her wrist. Defiantly, Leila stared up at him, glaring holes into him as he yanked her closer by the hand. His black pupil glanced back and forth between her eyes before he snarled an evil grin in her face.

"I thought I told you it was rude to touch without permission."

For a moment of clarity, Leila had to think of when he had ever said this to her. After a second, she remembered; he had said this in the ambulance the night of his capture, when she had been about to remove his makeup to clean his wounds. She wrenched her hand out of his tight grip, taking a step away from him and lowering her eyes from his intense gaze. As much as attempting to slap him had caught her off guard, having him catch her hand had been even more shocking and for some reason, she could not look him in the face at that moment, almost as though she was feeling embarrassed. Luckily, he seemed to bounce back from this quickly as within seconds, his voice and mannerisms were right back at their normal level. He walked away, meandering curiously toward her bedroom, where she had been upon his arrival.

"So what have you bought with _my _money?" he asked, helping himself to a seat on the edge of her bed, next to the two bags of clothing from earlier that morning. Leila hurried after him, hoping and praying his curiosity would not propel him to go fishing through her purchases, which unfortunately included both bras and panties. She knew that immediately going over to snatch the bags away from him would only further his desire to see the contents so she attempted to ignore both him and the bags, instead continuing into her bathroom to finish applying eyeliner to her left eye with her trembling hands.

"You mean the money you stole from innocent people?" she corrected him, leaning toward the mirror slightly to avoid feeling his glare on the side of her face.

"Yeah, something like that," he answered distractedly. Leila's heart sank when she heard his hand rustling the paper of the bags in the bedroom. "Hmm, what have we here?...Seventy-five dollars on _these _pants...thirty for this-" he paused and Leila chanced a glance into her bedroom where she had to stifle a laugh at the look on his face as he held out a frilly, floral yellow top in front of him. "..._thing. _And...oh, how _nice..." _Her heart sank even further; he had found her new panties. "I never took you for a pink _thong _kinda lady, doc, but that'll work..."

"Okay, stop," Leila suddenly cut in, dropping her eyeliner onto the counter to rush into the bedroom, and snatch the underwear from where it dangled on his finger. Before she could do this however, Joker leaned away from her, back onto the bed, extending his free hand, in which his trusty knife had appeared once again. Propped on his elbow behind him, he shook his head.

"Ah, ah, ah," he scolded, wagging the knife at her. "I paid for these, therefore I get to examine them all I want," he explained, smirking. "Just count your lucky little stars I'm not making you try 'em on for me, hm?" Joker winked, causing Leila's stomach to churn in disgust as she turned back into the bathroom.

It was hard trying not to care that the _Joker _was going through her new clothes and undergarments, but Leila did the best she could, listening to him 'hmm' interestedly upon pulling out a different item. However, as luck would have it, she was running out of things to keep her busy in the bathroom, which meant she would be forced further into his presence sooner rather than later. In an effort to distract him from the pair of turquoise lacy boy-cut undies he had pulled from the bag, Leila stepped into the frame of her bathroom door across from him, where he was still seated on the edge of her bed.

"You never did finish telling me why you're even here," she stated, giving his stringy, greasy green hair the critical eye she had inherited from her mother. Joker shrugged, dropping the underwear back into the bag before linking his hands together between his knees with a plop.

"I pay your rent, doll. This is my place as much as its yours," he answered casually, shrugging his broad shoulders, which Leila randomly noticed were somewhat oddly proportioned to his narrow waist. His eyebrows rose. "Wouldn't you agree?"

Leila's face remained very blank. "No." she answered adamantly, watching in apprehension as the Joker rose to his feet, wincing as he twisted to crack his back.

"_Luckily," _He paused to let out a groan as his spine gave an almighty pop. "_Your _opinion doesn't matter. All that does matter is that I have a key, I have your money and if you want to live to see Mommy Cindy and Daddy Edward again, you won't change the locks."

Leila's stomach twisted into a million tight knots. Of _course _he knew who her parents were. She shook her head, angered to feel tears gathering at the inner corners of her eyes. "You know who they are?" she asked in a hushed, horrified voice, taking a half-step back as the Joker approached, a look of false concern dawning across his painted face when he noticed her tears. His hands reached out toward her upper arms, his fingers wrapping around them.

"There's no need to _cry," _he said, his clowny voice taking on a hint of mock comfort. "They aren't in trouble unless _you're _in trouble, understand? As long as you keep being a good girl, there won't be any problems." His left hand released her right arm, but only to pat her cheek firmly with two fingers. Leila closed her eyes, twisting her head away from his mocking comfort and her arm from his grasp. She then looked up at him, staring defiantly into the black eyes she had once noticed were brown.

"I've already promised to follow your rules," she began, hoping beyond anything he would listen and take her words to whatever heart he contained. "But if anything happens and I _do _end up in trouble with you...please don't hurt my parents. You can do whatever you want to me, just-" She paused again, absolutely loathing Joker as she noticed a smirk begin to form across his mangled lips. "-please leave my parents alone."

Only a moment passed after she had finished speaking before Joker tossed his heavy arm around her shoulders, pulling her along with him as he walked toward the door to her bedroom. "Now _that _is a valiant and noble offer, Doc," he said in what could have been mistaken as a serious tone of voice, without a hint of clowniness audible. Leila felt relief flood her body as he turned them both toward the front door to her apartment. Maybe deep down, he wasn't as bad as he appeared, and she wanted to thank him for being understanding about the one thing she cared about. But only a second before she could turn to do so, this delusion of empathy was shattered as he yanked her around to face him. His scarred, creased face loomed before her eyes as he leaned down slightly to be at her level.

"But I don't make deals with _criminals." _

With a low growl of a laugh, he rose to his full height to pull open the door and step out into the hallway, casually humming a tune to himself as he walked away.

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A/N: Ladies and germs, we have officially reached the beginning of the fun stuff! From here on out, the story will begin taking on it's posted rating of 'M' for Mature. I'm not making any promises for lemons in the next chapter, but I want to make sure all of you understand that this IS a 'mature' story, and if you're not on board for the more adult content, please turn back now. I'm posting this warning ahead of time because this story is (as forewarned) darker than my previous Joker/OC stories. So please, if you're not alright with reading mature, sometimes controversial content, PLEASE stop reading here. I don't appreciate flame reviews complaining about the content of my chapters when the posted rating is clearly marked M. That is why I am writing a personal note to you readers, just so there is NO WAY any of you can say you were not warned.

As always, thank you so much for reading and keeping up with this story! I am absolutely loving it so far and it is really encouraging to know so many of you like it too! Feel free to PM me or email me, or even add me on Facebook (Haven Queenofmean Hunter) if you have any questions, concerns or you would like to see pictures of the characters! I LOVE chit chatting with my readers! Also, a big thanks to those of you who have been reviewing! Your feedback is truly the icing on the cake so to speak, even if it is only constructive!

Also, thanks to my beta, Auriellis for proofing my chapters for me, and to Lacey ClownQween'69 for reading and giving feedback when I need it!

SORRY for the long author's note! See you next time! -QoM


	10. Siren's Song

Heavy rain poured down on Gotham City, drenching anything and anyone unlucky enough to be stuck outside. This included Leila and Jay as they climbed out of their separate cars at Station House Fourteen, glancing over at one another in confusion as they rounded either side of Matt's mysteriously empty Jeep. It was uncommon, even downright rare for him to beat either of them to work, so the idea that he had already arrived and gotten out to go inside was suspicious. Leila hurriedly used her messenger bag as a makeshift umbrella, holding it over her head and shielding her sleek ponytail from the falling water as she and Jay trotted toward the docking bay. Both paused once they had reached the shelter, frowning and staring at the empty ambulance.

Jay placed his hands on his narrow waist, glancing over at Leila. "Well, where is he?" he asked rhetorically, since it was obvious she did not know. "Ain't like him to get here early...And by 'early', I mean 'on time'."

Leila nodded her agreement and shrugged, using her hands to attempt to brush some of the water droplets from the shoulders of her uniform. "He's probably inside eating or something," she suggested hopefully, moving toward the door to the station, figuring Jay would follow in her wake.

Pausing inside the door momentarily, Leila glanced to her left, into the break room where she had expected to find Matt, eating lunch or perhaps reading one of his sports magazines. A confused frown formed on her face as she felt Jay pass behind her; the room was empty. However, a moment later, a door down the hall creaked open, attracting her attention, where upon turning to look, she saw the object of her search stepping out, followed shortly by one of her two bosses. Leila felt her heart sink at the look on Matt's face. He looked forlorn, tired and, if she was seeing his expression correctly, somewhat sad. She approached her locker, averting her eyes quickly to avoid being caught staring while the two men shook hands, but she kept her ears open to what was being said.

Mitchell, the EMT supervisor, clapped Matt on the shoulder. "Just give me a call and let me know when you're ready to come back, Park," he was saying; Leila's heart sank even further. She may not have had any desire to date him but she did care tremendously for her co-worker and friend and did not like the sound of what her boss had said. "I'll have Phil cover for you. We're overstaffed on the morning shift anyway."

Leila chanced a quick, subtle glance over her shoulder, just in time to see Matt nodding his head and taking a deep breath. "Thanks, man," he said, his voice sounding gruffer than usual. "I shouldn't be gone that long, but I'll keep you in the loop. Later." Hoping to appear as though she had not been listening, Leila sighed, pushing her messenger bag into her locker as Matt began walking down the hall toward her and Jay. Fortunately, Jay spoke first, giving her the opportunity to turn around. He nodded his head toward the office door in the distance, behind which Mitchell had just retreated.

"What's up? You leavin'?" Jay asked, as simultaneously, Leila noticed that Matt was not wearing his usual uniform, and was instead dressed in a pair of jeans and a navy blue polo. He nodded, glancing sideways at her.

"Yeah," he answered, shrugging his shoulders as he pushed his hands into the pocket of his fashionable, tattered jeans. "My brother died last week. My mom-" He paused, again glancing at Leila as she gasped in both shock and sympathy. "My mom called me this morning and told me."

While she leaned forward to give Matt a consoling hug, Jay's face was blank in what Leila could only assume was surprise, seeing how she was feeling that same emotion; neither of them had ever heard him mention a sibling. She shook her head, taking a step back after they had separated from the brief embrace.

"I didn't even know-" she began but Matt cut in, shrugging his shoulders.

"-that I had a brother?" he finished her sentence. "Yeah, he and I weren't really close. We sort of grew apart when I went to college. He, uh-" Matt paused, clearing his throat somewhat awkwardly. "Well, it doesn't matter. He's dead so..."

It was quiet in the hallway. Leila did not know what to say, and apparently, neither did Jay. Matt did not seem all that upset, though once she thought about it, she figured that may have been his way of dealing with personal grief. It was, after all, a part of their job to remain professional and stoic around death and injury. Nevertheless, she knew a deep portion of him was distraught and she could not help but feel deeply sorry for him.

"Damn, dude," Jay started, shaking his head. "I'm sorry."

Beside him, Leila nodded her agreement. "Yeah, Matt, that's terrible. I'm really sorry."

Furthering the image that he was mostly unscathed from the news of his brother's death, Matt shrugged his shoulders again, forcing a half-grin onto his lightly stubbled face. "Thanks, but I'll be alright," He motioned down the hall with his thumb. "I was just asking Mitchell for a few days off so I could go to the funeral and all that. Plus my mom's kind of a wreck right now, so..."

"If there's anything we can do to help, just ask," Leila implored him, her eyebrows raised and her expression sincere. "Seriously."

He smiled in return, reaching out to squeeze her upper arm gently. "I'll be fine," he answered. "Just try to survive the next few days with Phil. He's covering for me."

Only Leila and Jay could understand what Matt had meant by 'survive with Phil'. The man was one of the younger paramedics on the force yet displayed some misplaced sense of seniority that typically had his coworkers rolling their eyes and eager to get away from him at the end of their shift. And seeing how Leila was already feeling vexed enough from her unexpected company the previous day, she did not feel that her nerves could take much more strain. Phil was known for his rather crude sense of humor and eerily nonchalant attitude toward the more serious cases, something Leila strongly disliked about him. She had been working as a paramedic for over a year but still felt the utmost compassion for her patients; she hoped to never lose that. However, there _was _one patient she felt she could spare and not bat an eye...Fortunately, she had yet to face an emergency involving him.

A few hours later, Leila looked over to the open double doors of the ambulance as Phil climbed back inside, grinning cheekily about the rude comment he had just made to one of the nurses outside Gotham Municipal. She looked away to continue removing and disposing of the now unsanitary paper on the stretcher, meanwhile fighting the urge to roll her eyes with great difficulty. Phil shimmied past her toward a seat on the bench and plopped down, giving an uncouth sort of groan as he reached up to wipe sweat from his hairline.

"You heard about that casino night they're doin' here?" he asked so randomly that Leila turned and looked at the open doors, thinking Jay had walked up. When no one was there, she figured he had been speaking to her, so she glanced over her shoulder at him briefly.

"Yeah," she replied, turning to shove a rolled up ball of sweated-on paper into the biohazardous waste bin beneath a cabinet. "My dad's a neurologist here so my mom's been begging me to go with-

As if she had not been speaking at all, Phil cut in, "I just asked that nurse Melissa if she wanted to go with me. She said 'no' though...gotta work that night apparently."

Leila bit her tongue, thinking, _Yeah, I'm sure __**that's**__ why she said 'no'. _Vaguely, she wondered if Phil would ever realize that nurses' schedules were not often written three weeks in advance.

While Leila finished cleaning up from their previous call, Phil lounged carelessly along the bench seat, flipping through his phone and occasionally letting out a stupid laugh at a text or picture message. Each time she had to pass him and he simply moved his leg to the side, out of her way, Leila felt herself missing Matt more and more, the way he always helped to made the work load seem much lighter. And it was only his first shift gone. How she was supposed to survive the next few shifts with his complacent, arrogant replacement was currently beyond her.

Fortunately, Phil's attitude around the patients was not as bad, so Leila felt it was something of a blessing that their night was turning out to be busy. They had already dealt with two rather strenuous cases and were already on their way to a third by the time inky, black darkness fell over Gotham City. The watch on her wrist currently read '_9:37'. _Leila sighed quietly in relief. Just under an hour and a half and she would be on her way home, to close and lock her door...and _pray _she would be the only human being in her apartment that night.

That entire day, and the night before it, Leila had been through an array of emotions, stemming from the Joker's impromptu visit, ranging from outright terrified, to shocked, even insanely amused, to the verge of tears. But now, as she sat there in the ambulance, bouncing along in time with the wheels connecting to the street below, her eyes gazing, unfocused, at the wall across from her, she felt ready to admit she was completely pissed. The motive to his visit had not been clear at first, not until Leila had taken some time to properly think it through. Now, it was obvious to her; the only reason he had come by, other than to be annoying, was to once again demonstrate his increasingly dominant hold over her and her sense of safety. He had clearly established that not _only _did he have a copy of her key to the apartment, but that he deemed it appropriate to stop by whenever he pleased, meaning that there was never a place nor time in which she could feel safe.

Leila closed her eyes, linking her fingers together in her lap as she listened to the scream of the sirens overhead. She could not help the feeling that sooner or later, she would wake up and find him sitting on the edge of her bed in the middle of the night, watching her sleep, with that disgusting, invading grin on his face. Goosebumps traveled down her neck and the length of her arms at just the thought.

The ambulance came to an abrupt and rather surprising stop, bringing Leila back up to earth from the depths of her personal hell with something of a jolt. She opened her eyes, glancing around, only to find that Phil had already risen from his seat on the bench and was approaching the doors with the bag of equipment on his shoulder, preparing to climb down. Leila followed, taking a deep breath to steady herself. Unfortunately, she had not been paying attention to the call that came through the radio a few minutes prior, but she figured within seconds she would know why they were there.

Flashing police lights assaulted her eyes as she landed on the pavement outside the ambulance, flexing her fingers to rid them of any air pockets that had been trapped beneath the latex. Jay was just rounding the truck as she turned toward the intersection, where the wreckage of two cars sat in a mangled heap. Her bald colleague shook his head in dismay as they began walking briskly toward the scene.

The two cars were a smoldering, twisted maze of warped metal, laying in a sea of twinkling broken glass, having struck each other with such force, it was almost impossible to tell the vehicles apart. It appeared that one of the cars, which was now upside down and dripping a foul smelling liquid from it's hood, had sped through the red light and careened into the oncoming car from the opposite direction, both moving at a fairly high rate of speed. Glass and small bits of metal crunched underfoot as Leila and Jay approached.

"Drunk driver," he explained in a voice raised slightly above the approaching sirens, obviously having noticed the somewhat blank look on Leila's face. "One D.O.A, the other critical."

She groaned. "Where did Phil go?" she asked with her tone at the same volume, glancing around as two police officers standing at the side of the completely totaled sedan turned to look.

Jay shrugged but didn't answer and instead addressed one of the officers. "Where is he?" he asked in relation to where their one living victim was.

"He's pinned in the vehicle," the man answered in little less than a shout over the sound of an oncoming siren. "We're waiting on the cutters. The door and windows are completely smashed." The policeman turned his head as the massive firetruck from House Fourteen pulled up and blocked off one lane of the intersection, it's horns, sirens and lights blaring at full volume. "Oh, thank God, they're here."

While the firemen unloaded the huge, heavy set of hydraulic pliers from the truck, Leila looked up at Jay after she had taken a step closer to the mangled car. "He's losing a lot of blood and going in and out," she explained, her throat already feeling somewhat hoarse from the plumes of acrid smoke issuing from the wreckage. "I'm gonna climb over to the other door and try to get in through the window to the passenger seat."

Jay's reaction was immediate as he shook his head adamantly. "No," he said curtly. "They're almost ready with the Jaws, just wait-"

"He's gonna die," Leila cut in, taking a step away from him, in the direction of the car, completely ignoring protocol. "Once I get in, pass me the oxygen and a neck brace. I can at least try to keep him stable until they can get him out."

Finally, Jay conceded to her plan and Leila was just hoisting herself onto the mangled hood of the car when Phil reappeared, looking breathless and harried, his blue latex gloves covered in blood. He was saying something about the other driver being dead and Jay was responding rather angrily that he already knew that, but Leila was already too far away, too busy concentrating on not cutting herself on the twisted metal to hear what they were saying.

As had already been described, the windshield and passenger side window were both almost completely shattered but held in place by the plastic tint. Without wasting time to figure out a way to break it gently, Leila steadied herself by placing both hands on the roof of the car, before driving her foot through the partially shattered glass, her leg protected by the black material of her uniform pants. The thick sole of her boot traveled the length of the window as she continued to kick the glass out of the frame, before finally, she felt comfortable climbing in.

Lowering herself in through the window was trickier than she had originally estimated, as the force of the impact had caused the door to buckle, thus making the opening much smaller than normal. She had to twist her hips in an awkward angle as she went feet first, bracing her motion with the resistance of the latex against the roof of the car outside. However, once inside the car and at a position she felt was right for dropping into the seat, she released her grip on the roof but felt her back scrape along the bottom frame of the window, where shards of glass still stuck up from the crevice. So great was the adrenaline coursing through her veins that she did not feel the pain.

The man in the driver's seat was almost completely and entirely pinned to the steering wheel, bleeding profusely from a head wound and, as she had mentioned to Jay, slipping in and out of consciousness at an alarming rate. She leaned toward him to speak, meanwhile motioning through the open window to Jay for the neck brace and a thick stack of gauze.

"Sir?" she called loudly enough for him to hear. "Sir, can you hear me?"

The man sitting beside her gave a low moan, his jaw seemingly frozen in one position though his terrified, cloudy eyes swiveled in her direction. "Please-" he somehow managed to moan. "Call my wife-"

"We're gonna get you out of here, okay?" Leila assured him, reaching out across the man as Jay leaned in with the brace. "I just need you to stay as still as possible for now. The fire department is here and they're going to use the Jaws of Life to get you out." Reaching back behind the man's head, she quickly removed the headrest to give her room to strap the brace around his neck and only once it was secure did she speak to him again, this time pressing that stack of gauze to the wound at his temple.

"The Jaws can be pretty loud," she said, glancing through the window again, to where the firemen were now preparing to start the machine. "So try not to let it scare you-"

"Y-you're gonna...stay with me, right?" the man suddenly asked, moving just his weary eyes upward to look into Leila's.

She smiled immediately, reaching down with her free hand to gently grip his trapped wrist and rub it with her thumb consolingly. "I'm staying with you."

Once the car had been cut apart and her patient removed, then carefully placed on the stretcher, Leila stayed true to her word and did not leave the man's side until he was safely inside the hospital, where upon briefly examining him, the ER doctor informed her that the chances looked good for his survival. When she returned outside to the waiting ambulance where Jay and Phil were sitting, she sighed in relief, grinning at them with something that felt remarkably like satisfaction and happiness; she had almost forgotten what those emotions felt like.

Jay returned her expression and reached up with a closed fist for a congratulatory bump from Leila. He nodded at her once. "You made a good decision back there, Hawkin. I'm proud of ya," he told her, leaning to the side slightly to give her access to the medical waste bin so she could dispose of her bloody gloves. "If you hadn't gone in that car, that guy would have probably died...Really good decision-making on your part."

"Thanks," Leila replied, her cheeks almost beginning to hurt from her wide smile. "He was a nice guy too," she went on, reaching down to the velcro pocket of her cargo pants when she felt her phone vibrate gently against her leg. "It's a shame he had to go through that tonight. He told me he was just on his way home from-"

Words utterly failed Leila as she glanced down at the device in her hand. Stupidly, distracted by the elated high she felt after saving a life, she had assumed the vibrating phone in her pocket was the one personally belonging to her. It was not.

The phone in her hand, the phone blinking a message of '(1) missed call', was the one belonging to the Joker.

She swallowed hard as goosebumps crawled up her arms and twinging back, the feeling of sick panic welling up inside her as if she were about vomit. With trembling fingers, she hastily shoved the phone back into her pocket and looked to Jay.

"Can we-" She paused to swallow again; the urge to puke in fear was becoming overwhelming. "Can we go back to the station?" Leila asked as calmly as she could.

Graciously, across from her, Jay seemed to notice nothing as he nodded, glancing at his watch. "Yeah, it's about that time, isn't it," he answered, standing from his place on the back step of the ambulance, but paused to point at the third, nearly useless member of their team. "Phil, clean up the papers and towels in there before we get back. You ain't done a damn thing all night."

The entire ride back to the station house, all Leila could do was glance, panicked, through the window of the truck every few seconds, watching the familiar surroundings whiz by, feeling that, given the chance, she could probably run there faster than Jay was driving. How she had missed the shrill, high-pitched ringing of that damn phone was a complete mystery to her, one that would likely cost her her life. What was she supposed to do then? _I'll __go straight to the police once I get in my car. I won't even go home, _she thought desperately. Out of curiosity, just to see what time he had made the call that would ultimately be her undoing, Leila fumbled for the phone in her pocket again, pulling it out and opening it to look at the missed call log.

There was only one number there, listed under the name 'Unknown', followed by the numbers '_10:13 pm'. _Leila stared at this time for several long seconds before she sighed, resigned to her fate, and leaned back against the wall behind her. At ten-thirteen, she had been climbing into the man's car, tending to the accident victim and she figured that if she was going to be killed for being unavailable, at least she had been doing something worth while. At least that man's wife had not become a widow that night. Hot tears begged to spill down her cheeks, but Leila rebelliously held them back; she would not cry over this. She would _NOT _cry.

Despite whatever calm state of resignation she had achieved on the ride to the station, Leila nearly flung herself out of the ambulance in her haste to get inside to the lockers for her bag. Behind her as she ran, she heard Phil's stupid voice call out after her, asking where she was going when there was still cleaning to do, but she ignored him and attempted to dodge Jay at the corner of the truck.

He frowned, reaching out with both hands to grasp her shoulders. "Woah, woah," he started, holding her still and looking down at her in confusion. "What's up with you? Where are you in such a rush to?"

Sighing frustratedly, Leila bounced on the balls of her feet, shaking her head. "Jay, I gotta go. My-" she hesitated for only a split second before a hastily formed lie flew to the forefront of her mind. "My neighbor just texted me, saying my apartment is flooding. My landlord is freaking out, saying a pipe burst." The words came flying out of her mouth at such a rate that Leila was almost positive she would have to repeat herself to Jay. Much to her relief, he let go of her a second later.

"Well, shit, you better get going then," he said, nodding his head toward the door. "Phil can clean the rest of it."

After the accident scene she had just witnessed, running the solid red lights between the station and her house seemed beyond foolhardy, but Leila was currently far from caring. Cold sweat had built up quickly along her forehead and chest so as her car bounced into the basement parking garage of her building, she unbuckled her seat belt, struggling to drive and undo the buttons of her uniform shirt simultaneously, figuring that the less time she spent outside between her car and apartment door the better. Although, once she thought of it, the inside of her house was no longer any safer than if she were to stand out on the street.

Now left in just her white undershirt tank top, her black pants and boots, Leila pulled into the first open space, immediately shut off her car and got out, glancing around, keeping her ears strained for any irregular noises. She turned her head toward the stairs. They were not far. She could run fairly quickly, perhaps even stop on a floor or two below her own, to catch her breath and double back to be sure she wasn't-

The hair on the back of her neck stood up. Her arms were suddenly coated in goosebumps. Whatever small amount of breath left in her lungs escaped her in a defeated huff. Leila turned slowly, her eyes drawn to him as if by magnets. The Joker was standing there, waiting, poised between two cars, leaning against an SUV. He was not smiling. She shook her head, hot tears already gathering in the corners.

"No..." she whimpered, turning once she saw him take a step toward her. "No!"

Suddenly, she was running, sprinting toward the stairwell, his quiet yet audible footfall just behind her, gaining on her like a lion after his prey. The door swung inward with a rusty groan and Leila struggled to wrench it shut behind her, but the Joker was already there, holding it open with his hand, forcing it open so that it slammed with a bang against the wall behind it. A loud scream escaped her, echoing in the tall, enclosed concrete space, reverberating as though a thousand people had just mimicked her exact sound. Panting and crying, she managed to scramble up the first short flight of steps and onto the next, halfway between the ground level and the first floor before a pair of gloved hands were grabbing her waist and yanking her down painfully onto the concrete stairs. She flipped over onto her back, striking out with both fists, aiming to hit him wherever possible.

"_Lay-luhhhh..." _the Joker was growling as he breathed raggedly, giggling mirthlessly between his panting as he dropped to his knees on the step between her legs.

"No!" she cried, struggling with her back scraping painfully against the sharp edge of the stairs beneath her. "I'm sorry! Please!"

"What did I say would happen if you missed a call from me?" he asked, his voice completely barren of any playful clowniness, instead deep, demonic, echoing like the growl of a rabid dog in the stairwell. "_Hm?"_ He shook her, having finally grabbed both of her flailing wrists and pinned them on either side of her shoulders.

Leila let out a sob, shaking her head frantically, taking deep breaths to try and explain herself. "Please, Joker, I didn't hear the phone! It was a major car accident and the sirens and-" she exhaled heavily, forcing her eyes open to look up at him where he loomed over her, attempting with every ounce of strength she had to calm down. Perhaps the less she struggled, the less he would attempt to subdue her. "Please..." she breathed. "You _have _to believe me. Joker...please..." She whimpered again, flinching as Joker grabbed a tight hold of her face in his gloved fingers, gripping her cheeks so tightly, she could practically feel them touching over the top of her tongue inside her mouth.

"It just so _happens, _I wasn't calling about anything serious," he growled. "You're still in the trial phase as far as I'm concerned, but trust me when I say, you are already on _thin ice, _Doc."

Leila nodded, opening her mouth wide and closing it again to stretch her jaw as he miraculously let go of her face before leaning back onto his knees.

"I swear I didn't hear it..." she moaned hoarsely, shaking her head as she too sat up. "I saw the missed-"

"Get up," he suddenly snapped, putting an instant end to her blabbering, standing from his position on his knees between her legs.

Leila blinked in confusion at his random, firm instruction but obeyed immediately, slowly rising to her feet from where she had previously been lying prone on her back against the stairs. Another whimper escaped her as Joker suddenly grabbed her arm, though instead of pulling her closer or smashing her into the wall as she was expecting, he merely turned her away from him with a rough jerk, bringing his opposite hand up to her shoulder, holding her steady. Leila closed her eyes, feeling her skin begin to crawl. Checking out her ass was one thing, but she at least wished he would attempt to be discreet about it. She could feel his eyes roving down her backside, though just as she was about to force herself away from him, he released her with a push.

"You should be more careful," he said, the mirth evident in his voice as he pointed down at the stairs where he had pinned her moments prior.

More confused than ever, she turned to take in the amusement in his eyes before following the line of his arm to the spot he had indicated. Much to her surprise, there was a dark, red stain along the cracked edge of the concrete stair where the small of her back had made contact a few seconds ago. Her jaw dropped open with the shock of seeing her own blood and she looked up at him, perhaps in a more accusatory way than she had intended.

In response, the Joker's eyebrows rose and he held up both of his gloved hands, smirking a very wily, amused grin. "_Trust me_, if I cut you, you'd know it."

Leila let out a humorless grunt of a laugh as she glanced back down at the smear. Somehow, she did not think there would ever be a circumstance or time in her life where she could "trust him", but she did not dare challenge his claim. Instead, she twisted one arm around to her back, sliding two of her fingers beneath the sticky edge of her white tank top where it had adhered to her skin by the warm fluid. Slowly, she managed to move aside the material to feel the stinging edges of a cut, and she groaned at the injury, bringing her hand back around to look down at the dark, red blood glistening on her fingers. The stairs didn't seem sharp enough to have cut into her so much, so there had to be another explanation for the injury. After a moment, it came to her.

"I forgot," she said with a tiny smile, relieved that she had actual, tangible proof of the reason she missed his call. "I scraped my back on the window of that guy's car when I was climbing in. I guess I cut myself worse than I thought." Leila shook her head, glancing up at him as he stood next to her, his eyes moving down to look at the shiny blood on her fingers. She hastily wiped them off on her pants. There was every chance the sight of blood excited him and she had no desire to provoke him further. "I'll uh-" she started, clearing her throat awkwardly, finding herself more and more anxious to get away from him. "I'll take care of it when I get upstairs."

She turned and without a glance back, hurriedly began climbing up the stairs in the hope that he had no more threats or business with her. However, to her huge disappointment, Joker seemed to have other ideas as his soft footsteps followed her, faint echoes in the stairwell. Leila felt a huge weight sink into her stomach. It had been a stupid, foolish hope of hers to assume he would let her simply walk away from her "mistake" without further repercussion. He had gotten distracted earlier by her injury, never finishing what he originally intended to do, whatever it may have been and now, there was no doubt he had some other punishment in store for her.

Her breathing increased, panic setting in, as she pictured various scenarios in her head, such as an incredibly realistic vision of him killing her in her apartment. This was not a likely situation since he had his chance and had chosen to let her go with a warning. The scene instead changed to the Joker cutting her, leaving her scarred, as a reminder to answer the phone. She already knew he wasn't above hurting the people who worked for him so it was a terrifying possibility. Perhaps he wanted the shelter of her apartment to hide the noise, her screams, not that her walls were soundproof by any means. Every step up increased her fear as her imagination took over with horrifying theories, images of what could possibly be waiting for her in her apartment. She could just imagine finding her mother, her father, Jay, Matt, even Murphy dead on the floor in her living room, collateral damage for her mistake. Tears threatened to form in her eyes at just the thought.

The only thing preventing her from slipping in to sheer paranoid hysteria was hope. Maybe he wanted another cookie, or to use the bathroom, or even the disgusting, but slightly more acceptable idea that he was planning to stay the night at her place. Actually, it did sound like something he might do; invite himself to sleep on her couch without so much as a question of whether that would be alright with her. At least, Leila _hoped _he would choose the couch.

But that line of thinking brought her to a sinister place, something she had only briefly considered in the darkest corners of her mind- rape. The word alone was ugly and bitter, evoking memories of the victims, the dazed women that had graced the ambulance and made her job emotionally difficult to the point of wanting to quit. Leila could remember their tears and shock, the way they shied away from Matt and Jay, jumping at the slightest touch, how some of them bore the marks of their attack with cuts and bruises, ligature marks around their necks or wrists. She knew all of them had the eerie knowledge hidden beneath the surface that they would live with that horror the rest of their lives. With the Joker stalking her every movement, she wondered if she would share the same fate and in a way, she would rather he kill her. At least then, it would be over.

Behind her, as she opened the door to her floor, she could hear the sound of his humming, off tune, as if he was deliberately trying to be creepy, and despite the previous noise in the stairwell, Leila had zero hope that a neighbor might step out and see her and the Joker. Even if someone did, they'd probably just walk away and pretend like nothing happened. In a city like Gotham, heroic actions got people killed, and to a certain degree, she felt could understand their hesitation, even if she didn't agree with it. And though her inner panic screamed at her to bang on someone's door, shouting for help, she understood all too well that the man behind her carried an entire stock of knives and would slit her throat within seconds of her attempt. No, she had to wait and see what he had in store for her.

At the door to her apartment, Leila reached into her pocket for her keys, but hesitated, turning her head to look up at Joker over her shoulder. She held out one, shaky hand toward the knob. "Would you like to do the honors?" she asked with a bit more sass than she had intended. "Seeing how you have your own key, and you apparently live here now?"

Joker shook his head, crossing his arms over his broad chest, grinning widely. "I never said I _lived _here," he countered. "I have my _own_ house, remember?"

"I think you mean 'garage'," she grumbled, pushing her key into the lock and turning it, opening the door to reveal a starving Murphy sitting on the kitchen counter to the right.

Joker let out a grunt of a laugh as he stepped inside behind her. "A garage that I _live in. _Ergo...'house'." He paused in the doorway of the kitchen, a scowl marring his face as he watched Murphy come unglued at the sight of his owner. He was meowing loudly and arching his back, walking back and forth on the counter as Leila picked up his bowl from the floor. "What does it want?" he asked.

She rolled her eyes while she had her back turned to him. Her patience was waning. "_He-"_ she began, tossing Joker a meaningful look as she knelt to scoop some dry food from the bag. "-is hungry." If she was going to die, at least she could be sure her cat was fed.

Behind her, Joker made a hissing noise like air being let out from a tire. "The last thing that cat needs is to _eat," _he growled, eyeing Murphy with distaste as the cat began munching the kibble. His eyes followed Leila as she squeezed past him into the hallway, heading into her bedroom.

For a moment, as she entered her bedroom, she felt the relief of being home. Even with him in the apartment, it somehow seemed safer surrounded by her personal effects, though that illusion didn't last long as the scent of gasoline hit her nostrils. She spun at the smell to watch the Joker enter her bedroom, his dark eyes roving over her like a predator, like she was prey to be devoured. She felt herself cower under his intense gaze.

"Sit down," he commanded abruptly, pointing a gloved finger at her bed. When she didn't move immediately, he reached out with his hands, gripping her upper arms in a tight, vice-like grip, steering her toward the bed. A whimper of fear escaped her as he pushed her onto it, her body automatically catching itself in a seated position. Leila swallowed hard as he bent at the waist to put himself at eye level with her. "Stay."

Leila decided there was absolutely no use in arguing with him. Whatever he planned to do, she would take it with dignity, despite his attempts to treat her like a dog. He would never hear her scream. The well-being of those she loved would ensure her cooperation and though terror threatened to explode her internally, she was determined to be strong. He would not break her. Fighting back the tears that once again wanted to gather, she stared defiantly back at his mocking expression.

Unexpectedly, the Joker stood and swept past the bed and went into the bathroom behind her, the door closing behind him. Though it was her chance to leave, to run, she knew it would be much worse if she did. He would find her, or worse, her parents or friends. So she stayed planted on the bed, listening to the sounds of rustling, of cabinet doors and drawers opening and closing, emanating from the bathroom. It sounded as if he was tearing the room apart, and maybe he was, but at that point, Leila cared very little. For now, the pain from the injury was setting in, causing it to sting and ache angrily, more like raw blisters than actual lacerations, running along the small of her back by several inches from where she had come in contact with not only the shattered window but also the sharp edge of the concrete stairs.

A minute or so later, the Joker emerged from the bathroom, his hands behind his back. Whatever he had been looking for was unknown and that raised her alert levels higher. She glared at him, knowing that he was using the uncertainty to scare her and she hated the fact that it was working to great effect. Leila turned her head to face the door again, not wanting him to see her fear, knowing how intoxicating he would find it. She would not give him the satisfaction. Though, it seemed he was determined to give her a terror-related heart attack, as she felt his weight settle onto the bed behind her, the warmth of his body closing in on hers. Her muscles tightened and she could feel minor tremors beginning within her.

As a finger touched her back, she bit her lower lip to hold back a scream. She would not scream, she swore to herself. His gloves had been discarded at some point and the warmth of his flesh against hers was almost too much to handle. Her eyes slid closed, wishing desperately she would wake from this nightmare soon, feeling his finger wiggle under the top of her shirt, yanking the cotton material away from the wound in her skin and causing her to wince in pain. He didn't care about her discomfort and she _hated _him for that.

He spoke, his voice lowered into that devilish octave. "Take off this shirt, or _I will_," he growled.

Her eyes widened in trepidation at those words, and she turned so quickly to look behind her that her ponytail whipped against the side of her face. "W-what do you mean?" she asked, searching his expression for any hint of a clue as to what his next action might be. The look in his eyes was as cold and unyielding as ever.

It happened within the blink of an eye. The freezing metal blade of a switch knife made brief contact with her back before it moved upward toward her shoulders, splitting the ruined tank top clean into two halves, which the Joker wasted no time in yanking roughly down her shoulders until it reached her elbows. Leila gasped loudly, her arms crossing against her chest to hold the remaining material in place. His purpose seemed clear and she felt a tear fall from one corner of her eye at what the future held in store for her.

Motions continued behind her back, but she didn't look, choosing to focus on the hallway outside her bedroom as she held the ruined fabric of her shirt over her breasts as a flimsy shield. Leila didn't want to know what hell he had planned for her and if she didn't look nor listen, she could pretend everything was fine, even if only for a moment.

"Hmm," Joker hummed in interest, dragging the blunt edge of the knife down along the ridges of her spine. "I haven't done this in a while."

Silence descended over them as Leila listened to the plastic of a bag rustling, the sound of liquid sloshing around in a bottle before a cold, wet pad of material met her skin, followed shortly by searing pain. Leila cried out instinctively as liquid dribbled down her back, slipping past the millimeter of space between her pants and skin, soaking into the top of her underwear.

"Is that alcohol?" she whimpered pathetically, fisting her hands around the fabric of her torn shirt.

"I can't have you calling in sick due to work-related injuries, Doc," he replied with a carelessly jovial tone, as if he hadn't spent the past few minutes terrorizing her, making her believe the worst. "I don't pay worker's comp."

She turned her head to look back at him, shock apparent on her face. He was cleaning her wound? At his side she could now see a box of gauze, a clear plastic bottle of rubbing alcohol, and bandages, clearly the spoils of his rummage through her bathroom. His eyes were focused on the small of her back, clinical and detached, and although she wasn't one hundred percent positive, she believed he had no other intentions. And like that, the stark terror began to ebb from her body. Perhaps his punishment was all psychological, but at the same time, she wouldn't drop her guard at all. He was still capable of using the knife sitting so temptingly close to his bent knee.

He continued his treatment of her back, onward and upward, slowly from side to side, slowly from top to bottom, pausing every other pass to wet a new piece of gauze. He was still using the alcohol, as Leila could smell it, could feel it stinging, though she was gradually growing accustomed to the pain. The soft gauze rubbed against the cuts and every now and again, his fingers would make direct contact with her skin, causing her to flinch, both out of fear and disgust. Fear that he still might take out a knife and begin to carve into her and disgust, as he was truly a wretched human being both in character and appearance. It was obvious that he had been wearing his vile greasepaint makeup all day and likely much of the one before it, as it had begun to fade and smear from his forehead down, the black spreading into the white and the red across his scars spread downward toward his jaw. The pads of his fingers were calloused and rough, grating across her sensitive skin like strips of sandpaper. She never imagined she would be half-naked in front of this man and the thought alone made her stomach queasy.

"Something's missing," he muttered, pausing in his ministrations to glide the bare tip of his finger down the length of her back, to the wound and back up again. Leila forced her eyes shut tighter, struggling to send her mind into a blank static, to block out the sensation of his arm snaking around her waist, tightening it's grip until he could tug her backwards, flush against his lap. A short gasp escaped her as the material of his vest scratched painfully against the raw wound on the small of her back.

She felt his hot breath first, crawling across her skin like a summer breeze that reeked of death, causing her chills to grow almost painful in their severity. Leila's insides were churning as that momentarily stayed panic began to well itself up inside of her again. She remained perfectly still, knowing whatever it was he was about to do, she would simply have to let him do it. It was immediately obvious to her that he enjoyed the struggle, took great pleasure in having to physically subdue his prey and she would be damned if she gave him the satisfaction of watching her squirm.

Leila jumped as something she had not felt until that point, something soft and warm, met the flesh along her spine, accompanying his heated breath. For only a second, she was granted a moment of clarity to wonder what fresh horror he was inflicting upon her, until the object moved again and she heard him exhale deeply, slowly from behind her; her tightly closed eyes popped open in shock. He was kissing her.

The new object against her back was his mouth, the surprising warmth emanating from his lips, the vague, residual stickiness from the red greasepaint lingering ever so slightly against her skin as he leaned away, only to move an inch or two higher. His lips returned yet again, pursed gently against her, and now that Leila was aware of what he was doing, she openly shuddered, gritting her teeth as she leaned forward a bit more. The grip of his arm around her tightened in accordance, insuring that she would stay in place. She had to let him continue, make whatever point he was attempting to make. Her head hung forward in resignation as she felt his lips move softly near the middle of her back.

His kisses were not exactly passionate, nor were they mere pecks, but rather firm yet tender, something she could never have foreseen from this man. He was the king of chaos and unpredictability, a nationally known criminal and yet here he was in her bedroom, sitting behind her, kissing her, only minutes after he had thrown her to the ground in a stairwell and attempted to kill her. Leila supposed this torture was all psychological and damn, it was working to great effect. She shut her eyes again, hoping it would be over soon and that it would not escalate.

Up her back, he continued, pausing in certain areas to pay more attention than others, his breath escaping through his nose in somewhat uneven bursts, an indication that his heart rate had quickened. Leila felt sick to think that he was deriving a twisted pleasure from this but again, she struggled to ignore him and the way her entire body had begun to shiver. He was nearing her shoulders. She could only pray that once he ran out of room on her back, he would be done. A deep, steadying breath traveled in through her nose and out through her mouth. He could not continue. Being raped was her worst fear and she could not let it happen to her, especially not by the foul man sitting behind her.

The grip around the curve of her waist tightened, his fingers curling, spider-like, around her hip, eluding to the fact that his opposite hand had moved, sliding up her arm to her shoulder, the rough callouses that lined his palm grating against her skin. Broken, dirty fingernails picked at the strap of her bra separating it from it's usual place so that the elastic band gave an ungraceful snap and slid down her arm to where the ruined tank top still remained. Leila forced herself not to let out a sob as she clutched her chest tightly. This was her worst nightmare made real, come to life in the one place she had formerly considered safe. He paused to purse his lips against the curve where her shoulder sloped gently toward her neck. She swallowed hard on a lump in the back of her throat, knowing that if he continued up her neck, she would be sick.

Yet again, he paused, though several seconds passed without another kiss, and Leila was just wondering what on earth he was waiting for, why he was not going on, when quite suddenly, his mouth was against her neck. His lips had parted and curled, his teeth bit firmly into her skin, and the noise that escaped Leila could not be described as quiet in any way. She yelped, rocking her head to the side and moving her hand to the top of his own where it remained curved around her waist. Her short, manicured fingernails dug into the skin there as tightly as she could manage, practically clawing him as he kissed her neck, gliding his tongue along the divots his teeth had created, soothing the reddened flesh there. He did not seem to notice her efforts to make him stop as his grip simply tightened.

On up her neck, he continued until Leila could feel the cool tip of his nose brush her ear lobe, and in a further attempt to cut him off, force him to lose access to that sensitive area, she leaned back against him, tilting her head back until her ponytail fell over his shoulder, turning her head toward his own neck. Tears were falling down along her cheeks with ease as the Joker let out a soft giggle, allowing his eyes to rove across the front of her partially exposed chest, which in the flow of events, she had completely forgotten was nearly visible. A moment later, Leila was emitting another hoarse, raspy cry as his opposite hand suddenly met her throat, his long fingers spanning easily from ear to ear. Her eyes flew open to find his black glare only inches from her own.

"You miss _one more call _from me and I _swear _to you, I will kill your entire family and everyone you love in the most slow, painful manner I can think of, _kay?" _he asked, his lips against her ear, his eyebrows raising as he nodded his head slowly, his tone one that a person would use to speak to someone of a lower mental caliber. When Leila simply blinked back at him, horrified, he tightened his grip, his teeth gnashing as he shook her roughly with his hand around her neck. "Say '_yes' _if you heard what I said."

Her lips, tongue and throat all moved immediately to form the word, though no sound managed to escape her lungs, her fear only allowing a strained, whispered "_Y-yes..." _to be spoken. This, it appeared, was enough for the Joker. Though just when she expected him to stand up and disappear through the front door as he had done the previous day, her entire upper body was pushed forward, bent so far that she could rest her chin on her knees. His large hand came down against the cuts on her back with a resounding slap, the snap of the sharp contact echoing in her bedroom like the crack of a whip, forcing her to let out a strained sob. It took a moment for her to recognize the sensation of a large rectangular bandage between his fingers and her bleeding skin, followed by his knuckles digging in to roughly smooth the adhesive. The pain was momentary before the pressure against her back lifted, the weight on the bed behind her was gone and the Joker was walking out of her room, without another word, without so much as a glance back at her.

As she sat there, stunned, listening to the sound of the front door opening, then closing again, terror slowly began to leave her body and the blank, horrified numbness in her brain was fading. Finally, she had the chance to think clearly at long last. Her heart was still pounding as she counted to fifteen, giving the monster on the other side of the door a few moments to walk away before she suddenly leaped from the bed and ran to the front door, fumbling with trembling hands to lock the deadbolt.

The heavy metal bar slid into place with a satisfying but not entirely comforting thud, leaving Leila completely alone in her apartment, turning from the door to sigh heavily as she placed her bare back against it. Ignoring the pain of her bandaged wound, she slid to the floor, her knees buckling on their own accord. With her head against the door behind her, she sighed, staring at the carpet before her with foggy, unfocused eyes, thinking back to what had happened in her bedroom just moments ago.

It had been sickening, torturous and confusing, every action, every touch of his lips against her back reminding her what power he held over her, the power to take her life or simply to ruin it by raping her. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he understood what her fear was and it was obvious he had exploited that, even enjoyed it, the thumping of her heart pounding out a rhythm of _'what if...what if...what if...'_ And yet he had cleaned her wound, dressed it, kissed her back and neck, in motions that almost could have been mistaken as gentle, caring, though Leila was not fool enough to believe the Joker felt any semblance of compassion toward her. True, he had 'kissed it and made it better', just as her mother and father had done many years ago but as she sat there, mulling through his possible reasoning, she stopped herself short. He was the Joker; there didn't need to be a reason why.

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A/N: My lovelies! I hope you enjoyed this chapter as we got our first little 'taste' of fun stuff to come. Just a reminder to everyone reading that I am on facebook, (Haven QueenofMean Hunter) if you are interested in seeing pictures of my characters from this story, updates on the chapter postings as well as the song playlist for this story. Each chapter has it's own song that accompanies it! As for this one, the song was Blood, Milk and Sky by White Zombie. Again, thanks to Auriellis for all her typo-catching, comma-wrangling and general help with this chapter! Until next time, kiddos! -QoM


	11. Show No Mercy

"He said _what?"_ Matt asked incredulously, laughing so hard that tears had begun to leak from the corners of his eyes as Jay and Leila related a story about Phil from a shift a few nights prior. "And she told him-"

"-That she wasn't pregnant," Leila finished his sentence, joining in with his infectious laughter. "She said 'I'm on a diet and I can lose weight, but you'll be an idiot forever', all from behind the oxygen mask." More raucous peals of laughter escaped Matt, and Leila watched, smiling as he bent double, nearly hitting his head against the rim of the trash can in his effort to stay standing. Glancing sideways, she caught Jay's eye, where he stood at the corner of the truck, grinning, obviously just as thrilled as she was that their co-worker was feeling so good after what was likely a very sad and emotional leave from work.

Eventually, Matt settled enough to sigh happily, wiping his left eye with the heel of his gloved hand as he helped Leila lower the stretcher. "Well, I'm sorry y'all had to deal with Phil while I was gone," he said, still shaking his head and giggling as he ripped the paper from the stretcher and wadded it up. "When Mitchell told me he was filling in for me, I knew you guys were in for a rough week."

Above them in the ambulance, Jay was picking up and tossing out random detritus from their shift, shrugging as he glanced down at Leila. "He actually wasn't that bad with the patients, besides the slip up with the heavy-set gal," he explained. "He just didn't pay attention or help out much, kept hitting on Leila-"

"He did?" Matt suddenly asked, so abruptly that it caused her to start in surprise and look over at him with a frown. He redirected his question to her, an appalled look on his face. "Did he hit on you?"

With a laugh, Leila shrugged one shoulder, embarrassed by the voracity with which he had asked that question, causing her to put much more concentration than necessary into spraying disinfectant on the bare stretcher. "'Course he did, but he wasn't very tactful about it," she explained, downplaying it purposely to put Matt at ease. She knew he viewed her as something to be protected, like a younger sister, and she did not want to start anything negative between Phil and Matt. "Honestly, he was just trying to annoy me. Asked me to go to that 'Casino Night' thing at the hospital, asked me 'what side I got I got my black on'...annoying stuff like that." She glanced over at Matt subtly, in perfect time to catch him shaking his head with a huff, only able to catch a few short snippets of what he was mumbling under his breath.

"...should tell Mitchell about that...totally inappropriate...such a dick..."

Leila grinned. It was nice to have her usual team back together and even nicer that their first shift reunited was officially over. She had the next day off and was wondering what she was going to do with all her luxurious time away from work when Jay's voice pulled her from her reverie. He was speaking to Matt as they pushed the clean stretcher back into the ambulance before slamming the heavy doors shut.

"So, you got any big plans for your first Saturday night back in the city?" Jay asked, smirking when Matt's shoulders squared and he seemed to swell with a furious pride of some sort. Matt nodded his head once, tucking his thumbs into the line of his pants behind his belt in a thoroughly 'Texas' sort of way. The funeral had been held in Houston, Matt's hometown, so it was no wonder he had picked up some native, cowboy tendencies.

"As a matter of fact, I _do _have big plans tonight," he announced ostentatiously, even going so far as to pull the front of his pants up a few inches. Leila could not help but stifle a laugh poorly with her hand, earning her a significant glare from Matt, before he proclaimed, "I have a date with a fine blonde medical examiner, how's about _that?" _

Both Leila and Jay gave loud noises of approval, laughing as Matt ran his freshly de-gloved hand through the front of his hair, leaving traces of latex powder clinging to the product holding his carefully windswept style in place. At that, he disappeared into the building of Firehouse Fourteen with a flourish, leaving Leila and Jay to glance at each other, smiling.

"I'm glad he bounced back pretty quick," Leila muttered as she and Jay moved to follow Matt into the cool, air conditioned interior of the station house. "I don't really like 'Moody Matt'." she added, thinking of the time he had gotten dumped by a very pretty girl a few months back and had spent the better part of a week huffing and puffing sourly.

Jay nodded his agreement but did not reply verbally, seeing how Matt was still standing at his locker when they approached. He had just sprayed two dabs of his obnoxious cologne on his neck when Leila walked past him to her own locker, coughing slightly as she walked through a residual cloud of the scent.

"You _are _going to shower before you go out, right?" she asked, turning her head and giving him the critical up and down look-over that she had so often received from her mother. "You have latex in your hair and you smell like alcohol and betadine."

"Yes, _Mom, _I'm gonna shower before I go out," he answered, shaking his head with a healthy roll of his eyes. "Besides, what are _you _doing tonight? You better not say 'sitting at home with my cat and watching movies'."

There was a long pause as Jay joined Matt in staring at Leila, in expectation of her answer, and she gaped back at them blankly before shrugging. "I'm sitting home with my cat and watching movies...?" she answered, yanking her messenger bag from the locker, letting out a laugh while the two guys groaned in unison. "There's nothing wrong with that! I'd rather sit at home and do stuff there than go out and spend money on drinks and all that. If I'm going to drink at all, I'd want to do it at home where it's...you know, _free." _

"Man, do you know what I'd give to go out and spend money on booze these days?" Jay asked, his eyes rolling upward as he drifted off into a fantasy, clearly imagining a life without three children. "Molly and I could go-"

As Leila listened to the guys talking spiritedly about their former and present social lives, she could not help but sigh privately, thinking of the night she was about to face. She would glance nervously about her apartment when she walked inside, strain her ears while she showered for noises of the front door opening, check and double check that the door to her bedroom was closed and locked firmly before she would fall into an oftentimes fitful sleep. True, she did normally prefer staying home to going out on some big, nighttime adventure, but the virtual prison the Joker had created within her apartment was something of a nightmare. While she did suppose being out and away from her home was safer than actually being there for whenever he happened to stop by, the chances were too great that she would miss his call. At least at home, she could hear the phone ringing with ease.

It was alarming but not all together surprising that Leila found herself in an inexplicably bad mood when she arrived home from work, and even less surprising that it had deepened further by the time she eventually crawled into bed. Murphy had clearly picked up on this, as after she fed him, he had sequestered himself beneath the bed and stayed there. Leila could not blame him but felt guilty that she had not given him so much as a pat or a greeting upon arriving home. There was something about hearing her coworkers discussing plans for that night, talking so happily about their lives, how carefree they seemed, that had set Leila off, even made her jealous.

But as she lay there in the dark, watching the opposite building with heavy eyes, she remembered that she had chosen this life for herself. The Joker had offered her a _choice _and she had opted into it, her mind on the money and the money alone, without hardly a second thought for what it might mean for her future. She was being punished for her greed and she knew it, not only by the Joker, who had chosen to torment her at every turn thus far, but also by her own mind. True, she would have been struggling financially to the point of having to move back in with her parents, but at least she would have been safe, free from fear and paranoia, released from the strain of sleeping with one eye open, half-expecting to find a monster sitting on the edge of her bed every time she turned over. This was her choice. _Her choice. _

A shrill ringing split the silence of her bedroom a mere five minutes after she had fallen asleep, causing Leila to sit straight up in bed with a gasp, her chest heaving as though she had been running. Glancing to her right and blinking furiously at the new source of blueish light in her bedroom, she reached over hastily to the nightstand, where her iPhone sat silent. She grabbed the smaller, more dangerous device next to it instead, hurriedly pressing her thumb to the green button to answer the call from 'Unknown'.

"Yeah..." she answered groggily, her voice deeper and more raspy than usual with the residual vestiges of sleep. A loathsome voice answered.

"Good _morniiiiing,"_ sang the Joker into the phone. Leila rolled her eyes toward the alarm clock on her nightstand; _'2:57am'. _Apparently, she had been asleep for several hours, not the original five minutes she had assumed. "I am in need of your services."

"Right now?" Leila asked, but then cringed into the phone upon realizing what a stupid question that was.

Accordingly, there was a pause on the other end of the call. "..._No,_ I'm planning to get shot in a few hours..." Joker answered, his voice momentarily dropping the note of clowniness and adopting one of heavy sarcasm. He paused again, seemingly to give Leila an opportunity to laugh, but during that moment of silence, she heard a loud groan in the background, followed by a sharp crash and rustling on the phone. The Joker's harsh voice spoke again, this time more distant. "Didn't I tell you being stupid was gonna start getting painful? Didn't I say that?" There was more groaning from the injured person.

Leila finally spoke, in an effort to distract Joker from whatever he was doing. "Where?" she asked flatly, throwing the blankets off of her legs before standing from the bed.

"My house." _Click. _

Leila sighed, tossing the phone onto the top of her dresser before stepping into a pair of sweatpants. If her mood had been bad before, it was nothing to what it was now. She only hoped she could keep it in check while in the presence of her..._'boss'. _

At that time of night, or morning as Leila viewed it, the streets of Gotham were all but empty, barely a car nor pedestrian moving about, making her drive to the Narrows pass more quickly than she would have liked. Her eyes glanced about constantly as she turned corners, taking the narrow and dimly lit streets at a more rapid pace than she had done during her previous trip to the Joker's 'house'. There was something about that part of town at three in the morning that she did not particularly enjoy...not that she enjoyed it any more during the day. If she had any sort of luck due to her, this 'emergency' would not be anything too serious and she would be back in her bed before the sun could even begin rising.

Once her car had come to a stop in the narrow lane outside of the garage, and once she had attempted to get out, only to be caught by her fastened seat belt, Leila found herself standing on the 'Bless This Home' welcome mat, glaring holes in the metal door as she waited to be let in. Her medical kit seemed twice as heavy that night, as did the rest of her body, and just as she was about to drop her mouth open in a wide yawn, the door swung inward with a rusty, metallic groan. A tall figure in purple pants and a blue, patterned shirt stood in the way, grinning wildly about something, while Leila looked up at his face, with perfect timing to catch his dark eyes flicker downward over her choice of mid-night wardrobe. She wished she had opted against a white tank-top with her dark gray sweatpants.

"Um-" she began awkwardly, suddenly aware that it had been a week since his 'treatment' of her wound, and finding that it was not _nearly _enough time for her to get over it. "I'm here." Her voice was flat, laced with copious annoyance and for the first time since coming into contact with this man, she did not attempt to hide it.

If he had heard the tone of her voice, he did not indicate it as Joker stepped back into the dingy hallway, holding the door open while he reached up to rake a bit of his greasy, green hair away from his face. Leila wondered vaguely if he really thought that small action would help his appearance any; it seemed a bit like attempting to polish a turd. "Indeed," he said, extending his arm to allow her entrance. She stepped past him without another word, without even a glance at him, her ears picking up the sound of distant groaning.

The main room of the garage appeared exactly the way it had upon her last visit, with the hydraulic lifts raised toward the ceiling, barren of any cars, the punctured couch oozing stuffing and upturned milk crates in their same positions. There was only one addition: a young man, whom she recognized from her last visit, sprawled out on the couch, his bloody forearm wrapped in a highly unsanitary towel. The Joker's voice from directly behind her caused Leila to jump and grit her teeth.

"The doc got out of bed in the middle of the night to fix your arm, Maxie, isn't that _nice?"_ he asked, going so far as to thump Leila on the top of her head with his hand. Her irritation climbing at a frightful rate, she moved toward the couch, setting down her kit to take a careful seat next to the man's waist. She reached out for his arm, struggling to ignore the way Joker had taken it upon himself to lean over the back of the couch, to watch with apparent interest.

The man whom Leila now knew to be 'Max' spoke, his voice trembling a bit as she unwound the towel slowly and carefully. "Is it gonna have to be chopped off?" he asked, his complexion pale as his eyes searched her face in apprehension. With the wound exposed to reveal a long, fairly deep, jagged cut from the inside of his wrist toward his elbow, Leila frowned, shaking her head, ignoring with difficulty the sigh of impatience given off by Joker over her shoulder.

"No, it doesn't need to be _'chopped off',"_ she answered shortly, with a bit more of a biting edge than she had intended. "But you do need stitches and I don't think I have any local anesthetic."

Max stiffened on the couch, his shoulders lurching toward her as his eyes widened. "What's that mean?" he asked quickly. "What d'ya mean?"

Leila's teeth clenched in the back of her mouth as she leaned to the side to open her kit, searching for gauze and hydrogen peroxide. She had encountered children with worse injuries and more bravery than this man. "It _means," _she began, repositioning his arm to begin gently wiping away dried and fresh blood from either side of the cut. "-that I can't numb you-"

"She means 'wont'-" Joker interrupted from the back of the couch. Leila ignored him.

"-so this may hurt a bit-"

"She means 'a lot'-"

With her last nerve absolutely shot and her patient on the verge of full-blown panic while the Joker snickered maliciously to himself, Leila turned her head, locking her stern eyes with his black ones. She struggled for a split second not to glance down at his lips.

"You know? You'rereally not helping and you smell like shit,so _back up."_

These words came flying out of her mouth before she could stop them, and for a moment, Leila feared she was about to die as a very clear look of surprise flashed across the scarred, painted features inches from her own face. But she did not allow her strong, forceful expression to falter, and to her shock, the Joker bounced his eyebrows once, before he held up both hands and moved away from the couch, toward a beat-up armchair across from them. She watched him go for only a second before she turned her attention back to Max.

"Just try to lay still," she instructed. "The cut isn't that long so this shouldn't be too bad."

Whatever she had said to the contrary in an effort to put the young man at ease, having stitches done without a numbing agent was, in fact, incredibly painful and before long, the garage was ringing with the sound of loud moans and gasps. As the sharp, curved needle slid in and out of his skin, suturing the wound closed, Leila could feel the Joker sitting a few feet away, watching intently, feeling absolutely no sympathy for his lackey. Truth be told, she knew she should not have spoken so harshly to him as he was, in no certain terms, her 'boss', and not only that, but the most dangerous man in the city. It was a wonder he had not cut her throat right then and there as Leila was certain it did not matter to him whether Max's wound was treated. Part of her begged to feel some sort of fear that he might have simply been waiting until she was done to dish out her punishment. That same part of her wondered if she perhaps ought to take longer than necessary to finish closing the cut... She chanced a glance to her left in the direction of the arm chair.

He was smirking from behind his hands as the tips of his fingers pressed together in front of his nose, his eyes cold and calculating as he stared at the profile of her face. One of his long legs was folded, his ankle rested atop his opposite knee, revealing several inches of multi-colored sock where the bottom of his purple-pinstripe pant leg ended. Leila turned her attention back to the sutures, focusing her eyes hard on tying a tiny knot in the end of it.

Max's sweaty shirt stuck to his chest as it heaved up and down with his breathing. "You done?" he asked, looking down at his arm and turning it slightly under the florescent light high above them. "Is that it?"

Leila nodded, using her pair of medical shears to cut the rest of the thread from his arm. "Yes, but I'm going to bandage it," she explained, feeling slightly more relaxed now that her patient was not in near hysterics and the Joker was not breathing down her neck from behind. "Just try to keep it elevated for the rest of the night and as much of tomorrow as you can. The bleeding should stop soon." She placed several stacks of gauze along the wound before wrapping them in place with a bit of cotton and tape.

"And if it doesn't?" Max asked, his eyes once again flashing.

Leila finally spared him a weak grin as she dropped the roll of tape down into her kit. "If it doesn't stop by the time the sun comes up, you'll need to get to the emergency room," she explained. "But it should stop by then. If you'd nicked an artery, you would have been dead before I got here."

Max let out a loud sigh, sinking back into the couch as he folded his forearm very carefully across his middle. "Good," he breathed. "That's good."

"Just uh-" she paused, yelling at herself mentally not to continue. She had to; he was her patient. "-just call me if you have any questions about it or something doesn't seem right." _Damnit..._

"Yeah, I will," Max replied, nodding as his eyes slid closed. "Thanks, doc."

Leila turned toward the arm chair, where Joker remained seated, dangerously silent. His eyes drifted up to meet hers and his eyebrows rose as she took a deep breath.

"So um- if there's nothing else, I'll just...go?" she asked hesitantly, motioning with her thumb toward the door. If she was really about to leave unscathed from her brash words toward him, it would be a true miracle. She held her breath, waiting on tenterhooks, expecting him to stand up and grab her arm at any second.

What she did _not _expect, was for him to merely nod his head toward the door and readjust his hands to link his fingers across his middle. "Yep," he answered casually, his face smoothly inscrutable. "Enjoy the rest of your day, _Doc." _

Leila had never left a building so quickly in her entire life.

Her bed was exactly where she had left it, the blankets still turned down and tousled from when she had thrown them off of her in a small fit of rage over being disturbed. Kicking off her sandals, she sank down onto the soft mattress with a relieved sigh, her eyes flickering toward the tall windows, searching for any hint of orangey, pink light spilling over the top of her building and onto the glass of the one opposite. Fortunately, the sky still appeared dark, the rippling reflection of the moon visible against the building across the street. And with a satisfied grin that she had actually managed to escape her trip to the Joker's house with her life, she closed her eyes, drifting off instantly. Perhaps standing up to him and showing less fear was the only way to go about it. Perhaps that was exactly what he had been waiting for.

…...

Leila knew he was there. She had not even opened her eyes and she already knew he was in her apartment. The brightness on the other side of her eyelids told her that the sun had long since risen, leaving her to wonder foggily what time it was and how long he had been there. She did not want to open her eyes, afraid she might find him sitting on the end of her bed, as she had been dreading from the first time he had entered her home. Slowly moving her foot, she inched her toes forward, then back, feeling for any sort of a depression in her mattress or perhaps an ass, even a leg or a hand. There was nothing. It seemed she was alone in her bed. She sighed, opening her eyes.

If he had come to punish her for her attitude earlier that morning, he had picked a beautiful day to do so. The sun was shining, gleaming brightly through her windows, causing her white comforter to practically glow as she pushed it off of her and sat up, leaning forward to glide her fingers into the front of her hair. It had come down from her ponytail at some point during the second half of her slumber and was now messy as it fell down her shoulders toward the middle of her back. At the moment, she ignored it, finding herself far from caring what her hair looked like when there was a monster sitting on the other side of her bedroom door. She knew she would eventually have to pay for what she had said, but so soon? After such a restful sleep? When the weather outside looked absolutely perfect? Leila walked toward her door, taking a deep, steadying breath as she reached out to open it.

Joker was indeed there, as she had sensed, though instead of standing right there on the other side of the door, waiting, Leila found him seated on the couch, leaned back comfortably in the cushions with both socked feet crossed at the ankle and rested on the coffee table, while a fat, gray cat stared up at him from the floor. His green hair and makeup were as messy and disgusting as always, and just to add to this picture of poor hygiene, the man was currently chewing off one of his fingernails, which he spat carelessly to one side before grinning brightly at Leila. Her face was completely blank of any expression as he spoke.

"Good morning..._again," _he said, crossing his hands together over his middle, exactly as he had done earlier that day at his house.

Leila blinked. She was too groggy to tell if he was there to kill her. Shaking her head, she turned away from the scene in the living room, skin crawling at the thought of all his bitten off fingernails scattered across her floors, and moved toward the kitchen. If he was going to attack suddenly, she could at least have some coffee first, possibly wake up a bit more and put up a better fight. She heard Joker rise from his place on the couch, his socked footfall approaching the breakfast bar behind her. He stopped there.

"You'll be pleased to hear your uh-" he hesitated, searching for a proper word. "_-patient _is still alive."

Leila tutted under her breath, casting a quick glance over her shoulder to see that he had rested his arms atop the counter, one hand up with his chin rested on top of his closed fist. "I'm surprised you didn't execute him like you did the last one," she said quietly, struggling to keep the hint of disdain in her voice to a minimum. She had already pushed his buttons once that day and felt it would be wise to refrain from doing so again. With the coffee brewing, she finally turned to face him, to find him shrugging his broad shoulders.

"Max has his uses," he answered simply, pushing his bare fingers up into the front of his long hair to move it away from his face. "That other guy was disposable. He was onlythere as a lab rat."

Leila did not immediately respond with one of the hundreds of replies floating through her brain, seeing how 'you make me sick' did not sound very nice when she was attempting to smooth over her harsh words from earlier. After a pause, she shook her head, arching her eyebrows as she folded her arms across her stomach, once again aware that she was still wearing that white tank top. Thankfully, she still had her bra on.

"What are you doing here anyways?" she asked, glancing down at Joker's vest, at a smudged white stain along the collar where a bit of his greasepaint had wiped off. "I'm betting you didn't come all the way here just to tell me Max is still alive."

Across from her, Joker let out a bark of a laugh, wagging one finger loosely at her. "You're right! I _didn't _come all the way here for that," he answered, rounding the corner into the kitchen, where he paused in the doorway. Leila took a precautionary half-step backward. Here it was. He was about to punish her, slap her, cut her, stab her-

"I came because you owe me an apology for how very _rude _you were to me this morning." Joker bounced his eyebrows twice, licking his lips as he smirked.

An apology? Leila fought an insane urge to laugh and instead merely grinned, glancing down at her red, painted toenails against the hardwood floor beneath her. "Fine," she said. "Fine, I'll apologize for the _way _I spoke to you, but I won't apologize for _what _I said. You were crowding me, Max was freaking out and..." She finally let out a laugh, tossing her hands. "I'm sorry, but you really do smell bad! You can't pretend like that's _news _to you."

"I smell like a _man-" _he countered, but Leila cut him off, turning toward her coffee maker to pour herself a cup and avoid looking him in the face while she spoke.

"You smell like a dumpster," she said, suddenly feeling very odd to be having this conversation with him. He let out a tut of offense, causing Leila to smirk as she moved to retrieve her carton of half and half.

"You may not have noticed, but my house isn't exactly as nice as _your _place," he said, his eyes following her as she leaned past him into the fridge. "It's hard to stay smelling lovely when all you have is a sink."

Leila hesitated as she twisted on the cap to the carton, blinking as she watched cream swirl about in her cup of coffee. There was a strange sensation tugging at her, one that she had to admit felt eerily close to the feeling she got while treating the indigent, homeless patients she encountered at work and she had never really been able to put her finger on what it was. Was it pity? Compassion? She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Joker was not vying for her sympathy by saying what he had, but Leila still could not deny that she felt somewhat _bad _for him in that moment.

Earlier that morning, she had been thinking about how standing up to the Joker and showing less fear toward him had seemed effective toward her situation. But now as she stood there stirring her coffee and listening to his attempts to shoo Murphy away from his pant leg, she had to wonder if perhaps...just _maybe, _she should try to show him some kindness. When she had been teased relentlessly by bratty classmates back in her middle school days, her mother had told her to 'kill them with kindness'. Leila had always thought that was a crock of bullshit mothers fed their kids to keep them out of trouble, but now, she questioned how the Joker would react were she to show him a hint of her truly compassionate side, the side that had brought her to being a paramedic in the first place. Placing one hand on her hip, she turned toward him resolutely, where he stood scowling down at her cat as he pawed at the tip of his big toe.

"I'll make you a deal," she said, worrying momentarily that her offer might piss him off. Joker looked up, his eyebrows arched sharply, warping the already misshapen black rings around his eyes. "If you take a shower here, I'll apologize for saying you smell like shit...deal?"

Joker hesitated across from her, his eyes squinting as he cocked his head to one side, glancing her up and down as though attempting to spot some sort of catch to her proposition. Leila took a sip of her coffee, raising her eyebrows nonchalantly from behind the mug, in an effort to show him that she was being perfectly serious.

After what felt like an hour, he finally gave a single nod and held out his hand. "Ya got yourself a deal, Doc," he answered. Leila reached out to shake his hand, but gasped when his grip suddenly tightened and pulled her closer, into his stinky aura, laughing when she coughed and pushed him away toward her bedroom.

"There are clean towels in the closet," she explained, pointing to the cupboard he had recently ransacked during his last visit, while he had looked for bandages and alcohol. "There are also new bars of regular soap in there too so you won't have to smell like a girl..." Leila paused, upon sensing that Joker had turned his head to look down at her, and she cowered slightly under his glare, glancing back and forth between his dark eyes. "Unless...you _want _to smell like a girl?" she offered carefully. Joker grunted a laugh, shaking his head as he glanced through the contents of her cabinet, giving Leila the opportunity to go on, once again eyeing the various grime and makeup stains on his vest. She hated herself for even considering what she was about to offer, but if she was going to show him a certain level of kindness, she might as well do it the right way.

"If you want," she began cautiously. "...you can leave your clothes outside the door here and I'll wash them for you? There's no point in taking a shower just to put dirty clothes on again."

Above her, Joker hummed contemplatively, drumming his fingers against his arm as he leaned against her bathroom counter. "That's _true..." _ he said slowly, his clowny voice echoing strangely in the tiled room around them. Leila turned into her bedroom, moving toward her dresser to pull open one of the bottom drawers and begin digging through the various clothing.

"I have a pair of men's sweatpants and a shirt you can wear once you get out," she said, again returning to the bathroom doorway, holding out a pair of baggy, cotton sweatpants and a black t-shirt. Joker arched one eyebrow, his eyes flickering from her face down to the clean clothes and back up again. He smirked, taking them from her to place them on the counter.

"Ex boyfriend?" he asked curiously, glancing at her in the mirror over his shoulder to wiggle his eyebrows as he tugged on the already loosened knot of his tie.

Leila flushed a delicate shade of pink and shook her head. "I like wearing baggier clothes while I'm at home," she answered, unsure why she suddenly felt so awkward. "More comfortable..."

Joker gave a very perceptive nod as he reached for the door. "Whatever you say, Doc."

As the door closed in her face and locked from the other side, she called out "Use the soap!...And wash your hair too!"

Within a few minutes, the shower was running in the bathroom as Leila could hear it from the kitchen, and in her bedroom, her ears picked up the sound of the door opening, followed shortly by a soft thump of clothing on carpet. The door closed again, so she took that as her cue to peek very carefully around the edge of her bedroom door from the hallway. Sighing in relief, she saw that Joker had simply tossed his filthy clothing out onto the floor in a heap before retreating back into the bathroom. She moved toward the pile of purple, green and blue and knelt down to pick them up, wrinkling her nose as she felt that they were still warm.

_"Gross..."_ she murmured, holding the lump of clothing far out in front of her as she trotted quickly to the washing machine.

The tiny laundry room in her apartment, across from the kitchen, was soon full of the sound of running water while Leila stood at the washing machine, using just her pointer finger and thumb from her right hand to very carefully separate the various articles of the Joker's clothing as though they were something recently dead. She had already debated with herself on whether she ought to break out a pair of latex gloves for this venture, but had decided against it, figuring that she had touched far worse things in her career than a set of dirty clothes. After detaching the suspenders, his long, purple pinstriped pants were sunk into the soapy water, along with his socks and, to Leila's embarrassment, a pair of black boxer-briefs, leaving just his shirt, vest and surprisingly, a white wife-beater undershirt. She tossed the latter two items in and had picked up his blue, hexagon-patterned shirt to do the same, but paused with it held out in front of her. Her curiosity dared her to smell it, and of course, she did, only to cough loudly, her eyes instantly watering as she forcefully dunked it down into the water. _Maybe a dash more soap..._she thought, tipping a bit more of the blue liquid into the machine.

By then, the time on her microwave had reached eleven o'clock, and Leila's stomach was growling with a fierce intensity. The shower still seemed to be running in her bathroom, which she did not find all that surprising; it had to have been at least a week since he had even pretended to bathe. That same tugging, compassionate sensation flicked at her sympathy muscle when she wondered how long it had been since he had actually taken a full shower, with hot water and soap included. No human, no matter how vile, should ever have to live like that. Turning into her kitchen, she pulled a pan from under the stove, assuming that he would be hungry and would likely eat, whether or not she cooked something for him.

However, the longer she cooked and the longer it went without a single sound from her bathroom or bedroom, the more Leila became suspicious of the silence. There was bacon in the pan and toast cooking in the oven, perfuming the apartment, so the fact that he had not yet come to investigate seemed odd to her. Frowning, she first leaned out of the kitchen into the hallway; just because she was being nice to him, did not, by any stretch, mean that she was not still scared that she'd find him hiding in wait around a corner. The hallway was empty and aside from the washing machine banging away in the laundry room, the apartment seemed entirely silent. Her frown deepened as she took cautious steps toward her bedroom. And that was where she found him.

He was not digging through her drawers as she had half-expected, nor was he standing in her bathroom. The Joker was lying on her bed, soundly and deeply asleep on his back, with Murphy curled into a fat ball against his side. Leila's arms dropped to her hips as she stepped into the doorway, her eyes glancing over his recumbent pose, wearing the sweatpants she had loaned him, though the shirt had been abandoned and left in the bathroom. His left arm was tucked beneath the pillow under his head, while his right lay across his slowly rising and falling middle.

Apparently, he had emerged from the shower some time ago as the clean, wispy green hair at the base of his neck had dried and tightened into curls. How he had managed to wash both his hair and body without allowing the water to touch his face would forever remain a mystery to her. Earlier, after leaving him to his own devices in her bathroom, Leila had wondered curiously to herself whether he would wash the remaining greasepaint from his face, leaving him completely flesh-toned. It seemed he had not thought it wise to do so as the same faded and creased makeup covered his face. Part of Leila was relieved for this; it was awkward enough seeing this terrorist without a shirt on, lying in her bed, let alone without his characteristic painted mask. Very carefully, she took a step toward the sleeping monster, her eyes traveling from his face, down his neck to his bare shoulders. He was absolutely covered in scars. Though admittedly not the scars Leila expected.

Most of his right shoulder and the right, upper portion of his chest was covered by one massive burn, the skin smooth and shiny in some areas, while rippled and malformed in others. The relatively small patch of hair across his chest had seemingly refused to grow back within the confines of the scar, leaving several inches of his skin bare. A moment of insanity told Leila to reach out and touch the flesh there, just to see what it felt like, but she resisted. What were the chances that his hidden left hand bore a knife beneath that pillow? No, she had to let him sleep. She could only guess how long it had been since this man had experienced a decent rest in a nice bed. She continued to study him, however, quite positive that she would never get the opportunity again.

Aside from the burn scar, the green hair and the ugly greasepaint, the Joker appeared as physically normal as any other man, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, where the line of the sweatpants sat low on his hips. Leila was ashamed to feel her cheeks burning when she noticed a thin line of hair leading from his belly button down past the cotton waistband of the pants. Just as she had felt odd upon finding that his blood ran as red as any other human, she found it odd that yes, the Joker was indeed of the male species, he did indeed have body hair. It just seemed that _everything _about him should be abnormal.

Leila's eyes suddenly slid back up to his neck as a startling thought flashed through her mind. She could do it. She could end her nightmare right then and there. Joker's head was turned away from her, facing the windows on the far side of her bedroom, the right curve of his neck exposed, so temptingly to her. How easy would it be for Leila to run out into her kitchen, grab the sharpest knife she had before cutting his throat in one clean slice, watch this evil, horrible man bleed to death in her own bed. She could end not only her hellish 'employment' but the fear and chaos all of Gotham had experienced at his hands. The police would likely not even care how or why she had done it. She could claim it was self-defense, set it up to look as though he had attacked her. It could all be over, right then. She knew there was no way this could happen, but it was an interesting and terrifyingly tempting idea.

Leila jumped when the Joker suddenly spoke, without moving so much as an eyelid.

"If you're gonna kill me-" he began, his voice raspier and deeper than usual with residual sleep. "-I suggest you have the knife in your hand _before _standing over me. That's common sense, Doc." His left hand slipped out from under the pillow, using the back of the silver knife between his fingers to scratch an itch on the tip of his nose.

Leila huffed, rolling her eyes as she turned away from the bed, but paused in the doorway to look back at him. "I wasn't going to _kill _you," she lied...kind of. "I was coming to tell you I made breakfast and that you're welcome to it if you're hungry."

On the bed across from her, Joker gave a deep, rumbling hum as he rolled onto his left side and continued until he had turned completely onto his stomach, his face smearing old greasepaint all over her white pillows. His back rose and fell heavily as he sighed. "That _does _sound tempting-" he grumbled. Frowning, Leila watched as Murphy, who had been shifted to the side with the Joker's motion, climbed slowly onto his back and curled into a tight, fluffy spiral. Joker grunted a laugh. "-but I think your animal wants me to stay right here."

With a huff of aggravation that her cat had befriended the most dangerous man in the country, Leila turned out of the room and left them to it, figuring, miserably, that she could eat in peace and lay on the couch until the purple clothing in her dryer was done. _Then, _if she was lucky, perhaps she could convince the Joker to leave.

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A/N: I hope you enjoyed this little break from the heaviness, ladies and germs. More 'stuff and things' to come soon! It seems like I have found a good writing-posting rhythm for myself, so I can proudly say, there will be no more month-long waits between chapters. For those interested, I have both a Tumblr and Facebook entirely centered around this story and my life while writing it. Check out my Tumblr blog here: .com and my Facebook by searching for the name 'Haven Queenofmean Hunter'. Feel free to add or follow me on either one, but bear in mind that I am on Facebook more often than Tumblr, though they are both usually updated with the same things. SideNote: I have some new, fantastic, rather risque pictures of Leila and Joker together. Let me know if you would like to see. As for the song accompanying this chapter, it is Bad Days by The Flaming Lips. I think it suits this chapter nicely. Anyways, THANK YOU SO MUCH for the outstanding support and feedback! I look forward to hearing from you about what you thought of this chapter. = ] -QoM


	12. Skin Deep

Leila stared down at the wet, soapy pillowcase in her hands, scowling as she flexed her aching fingers. Despite what she had guessed to the contrary, it seemed the Joker did, in fact, use _permanent _hair dye. She had been working on scrubbing the acid green stain from the linen for what felt like an hour by that point. Apparently, just the fact that his hair had been wet while lying in her bed was enough to leave faint but noticeable marks on the white material, evidence of her attempt at kindness toward the man. Fortunately, the smudges of greasepaint had come out with a simple run through the washing machine, but that damn hair dye was proving to be more stubborn. Leila did not know if she would ever fully understand _what _she had been thinking.

Yet, the day before, after he had slept for more than two hours and gotten dressed in his clean, customary purple ensemble, Joker had seemed more relaxed, less uptight in some miniscule way. Leila could only imagine that he was feeling better at _finally _being clean for once, after a comfortable sleep in a decent bed and although she wanted to feel some sort of annoyance that he had so blatantly exploited her compassion, she could not help but feel proud of herself. She had upheld her standards of how to deal with people who mistreated her and hoped it would somehow pay off in the long run. For then, however, Leila was getting the idea that her pillowcase was permanently and hopelessly ruined. So instead of wasting more time and effort on it, she gave it up as a bad job. Into the trashcan it went.

Upon Joker's departure the previous day, Leila had closed the door behind him and locked it, not that it helped, and had spent the remainder of the day battling thrills of anxiety over whether she had opened a proverbial can of worms. By allowing him to take a shower and sleep at her house that _one _time, would he think that she had somehow given him unspoken permission to do this on a regular basis? While she knew that this was most certainly _not _the case, she still had to wonder if he might show up in another two weeks, expecting the same royal treatment. _That _could not happen. But what could she do to prevent this? He was going to show up either way, she knew that, but there had to be some way she could make it so he did not _need _a shower...

Perhaps she could simply buy him a shower of his own. That made sense to her, seeing how he had complained or rather _stated _that he only had a sink in his 'house', which made staying clean and smelling fresh nearly impossible. But was there even such a thing as a 'portable shower'? If there was, surely it was bound to be very expensive and large, cumbersome to move or give to him in some discreet way. No, once she thought it through, a whole shower seemed a little _too _much. It was already a miracle in itself that she had told him point blank, to his face, that he smelled uncannily like a dumpster and lived to tell the tale, so she had to think that giving him an entire shower would be pushing her luck a little too hard. Her assistance had to be small, almost unnoticeable for what it was, something tactful but helpful, something that would make it completely unnecessary for him to come over to use her amenities.

With a sudden realization, Leila sat straight up; she knew exactly what to do. Rising from her seat on the couch, she glanced at the time on the front of her cable box, and upon seeing that she only had one hour left before she needed to be at work, she hurried into her bedroom to throw on her uniform and boots. Within minutes of this, she was headed out the door, saying a quick goodbye to Murphy and mentally running through a checklist for what she needed to buy.

Seeing how her shopping list was not that extensive, her trip into the store did not take nearly as long as she had expected it to and within twenty minutes, she was back in her car, setting the plastic bag of toiletries in the passenger seat beside her. For several long moments, she sat there, staring at the printed label on the plastic, wondering if there was any possible way for the Joker to grow angry or even embarrassed by her thoughtfulness. Part of her was quite tempted to run back into the store and return everything, but at the same time, she knew he truly needed these things. Not only that, but _she _needed them, for not only her privacy but her sanity as well. It was a horrifying thought but Leila had a very strong suspicion that Joker might be the type to come climbing into her shower while she was already _in it. _That was a situation she would very much like to avoid. If he killed her for her kindness, well...at least she could say she tried.

There was absolutely no point in returning home before work, so after carefully concealing the bag of 'gifts' for Joker beneath the passenger seat, Leila turned her car onto the street in the direction of the firehouse, figuring that Jay would be there by then and she could pass the time talking with him. As she drove, she allowed her mind to wander through a plan for how to get the bag of personal items to the Joker, preferably without direct contact with him and _most _especially without having to see him face to face. The last time she had seen him, he had been standing shirtless in her apartment and Leila was not keen to be caught blushing again. Yes, she did find him vile and repulsive, but alas, he was still a _man, _half-naked in her living room. Yet another reason to give him these things; she did not want him in her house unless he was fully clothed and there for a specific purpose. These unannounced visits were starting to wear on her nerves.

As expected, Jay had already arrived at the station before Leila and was inside the break room when she found him, thumbing his way through something on his phone and looking somewhat grumpy. Upon hearing her entrance, he glanced up, shaking his head as he set down his phone.

Leila stepped into the doorway, motioning to the device. "Everything alright?" she asked, frowning as Jay rolled his eyes.

"Yeah," he answered, his word escaping in the midst of a heavy sigh. "Just got an email from one of Kyle's teachers saying he's got a 'D' in chemistry, but that's not surprising. I failed chemistry in high school too." Jay paused, looking Leila up and down as though he had only just noticed she was there. His eyes bounced down to the watch on his wrist. "What are you doing here so early? You got another half hour before our shift starts."

Leila opened her mouth to reply but hesitated for a split second, wondering why she had not previously thought of something to say when asked this question. Although she supposed a trip to the store did seem innocent to an objective, outside party. Shrugging, she smiled, motioning with her thumb over her shoulder to the door through which she had just come. "I needed to run by the store for a few things and didn't feel like going back home." she answered. "Plus, I figured you'd be here already."

At the table, Jay let out a laugh, rubbing two fingers across his forehead firmly. "Yeah, this is my only hour of 'me time'," he explained.

Leila nodded, giving him a sympathetic smile. "Well, I'll leave you to it," she offered, but paused when Jay shook his head and opened his mouth, likely to say that he did not mind the company. "It's okay! I need to put my bag away anyways! You just enjoy your time alone with Jay. I'll be out in the dock."

With her bag stowed away in her locker, Leila ventured out into the empty docking bay, where it appeared that both ambulance and fire truck were currently out on a call and with a sigh, she took a seat at the tall workbench-style desk along the wall. She patted the pockets of her work pants, double checking that she had both phones with her. Ever since the night of the missed call, she had been almost obsessive about her 'work' phone, constantly checking her pockets or purse or the tables nearby, to be sure it was within range, close enough to be retrieved relatively quickly if it were to ring. Fortunately, aside from the previous day when it had woken her up at three in the morning, it had been silent.

It was not long before Leila looked up to see the familiar back end of a deep blue Jeep Grand Cherokee pulling into the space next to her gold Camry and within a few seconds, Matt was climbing out, slinging his bag over his shoulder. There was an unmistakable glow about his appearance that day and Leila stifled a snort of laughter as she remembered his date with the blond medical examiner two nights prior.

Once he had gotten close enough, she spoke. "How did it go?" she asked in a purposely offhanded tone of voice, hoping to surprise him into an honest answer.

A huge, silly grin nearly split his face in half as he pulled an expensive pair of sunglasses away from his eyes. "Awesome," he answered. "Saw her again last night, actually."

Leila laughed, shaking her head as Matt combed a few fingers through the front of his carefully coiffed hairstyle. "Knowing your charm, I'm sure she was simply powerless to resist." she mumbled sarcastically, raising her eyebrows as her handsome colleague cast her a dark look. Though just as he opened his mouth to reply, the door to the station house swung open and Jay stepped out, his face lighting up in a teasing, mischievous grin when he saw Matt, who, in turn, promptly flushed a shade of pink.

_"O-o-o-h, _Mister Casanova, fresh off a date, I see!" Jay crooned loudly, thumping Matt hard on the chest. "Did she say what a _charming _and _handsome _young man you are? Did she tell you how _stunning _your baby blue eyes are?" he continued, raising his voice to be heard, even when Matt slipped quickly into the firehouse, his ears practically glowing red. Jay looked at Leila, grinning widely as she laughed. "I never get tired of pokin' fun at that kid."

After a while, the joking and teasing died down and Jay and Leila were treated to a very misty-eyed account of Matt's two dates with the medical examiner, which, according to him, had ended with him taking her home at midnight, though neither of his coworkers were fool enough to believe that. Jay was warning Matt about the perils of sleeping with random girls and Matt was defending himself to Leila's immense amusement, when the door to the bay opened and their supervisor, Mitchell, poked his head around the corner.

He glanced at all three of them before stepping out. "Oh, I'm glad you guys are still here," he breathed, setting a piece of paper on the desk on Leila's left. "I got a memo this morning asking the Houses to try and conserve gas by staying at the station when not on a call. I guess-" At that, he paused and looked out into the parking lot, the team mimicking his motion to find that the familiar ambulance belonging to Station House 14 had pulled in. Mitchell continued. "I guess the price of diesel has gone up again so they want us to cut back where we can."

As the lead medic on the team, Jay nodded in compliance, shifting out of the way so the ambulance could pull in behind him. "You got it, boss man."

Leila supposed it was a good thing Mitchell had relayed the memo to the team before their shift, as nearly four hours later, they had yet to receive a call and normally, they would have gone out cruising around, wasting precious gasoline. With nothing to do but restock the ambulance, it was the first shift Leila had ever worked where she could admit she was officially _bored. _It seemed Matt felt some of that same restlessness as he sighed heavily, pushing an unopened box of latex gloves into a compartment.

"This is weird, don't you guys think?" he asked, turning to hop down from the truck and take a seat on the metal step above the back bumper. His eyes swiveled from Leila to Jay and back again, waiting for an answer.

Jay was the first to speak as Leila was currently focused on pointlessly reorganizing the multiple rows of tiny, glass, liquid medicine bottles. "What's that?" he asked, not bothering to look up from where he was flipping through a stack of papers, itemizing their inventory.

Matt tossed his hands into the air, indicating their surprisingly calm surroundings. "This!" he exclaimed. "The fact that we haven't gotten a call yet and it's already eight o'clock!" He paused, glancing back over his shoulder at Leila, who was forcefully ignoring him. She already knew where he was headed with this line of comments. "I mean...Leila, have you ever worked a shift where you got literally _no _calls?"

Still refusing to turn her head to look at him, she merely shrugged, shifting a bottle of Alprazolam to trade places with the closely named Alazopram. "Nope." she answered simply.

"See?" Matt continued. "It's almost _too _weird, you know what I mean? Almost like-"

"No, Matt, don't," Jay cut in, holding up a hand. "Don't start with that Joker shit again. It's been _weeks-"_

Leila felt her stomach drop to her ankles at the sound of the name. Now she _definitely _could not turn around.

"Exactly!" Matt went on, sounding more and more like an insane conspiracy theorist. "It's been almost a _month _since anyone's heard anything about him. Doesn't it seem like he's planning something big again? Like the calm before the storm?"

"And I guess part of his elaborate plan is to make _all _the nine-one-one calls in the city just...disappear? You _really _think that's what's goin' on, Matt?" he asked, but then had obviously looked to their third team member for support as she heard him say her name. "Leila? You believe what he's sayin' over here?"

Fixing a carefully nonchalant expression to her face, she turned, glancing between the two guys, her eyebrows raised. "Oh, no, I stopped bickering with him over that weeks ago," she said, thankful they could not hear how hard her heart was beating. "It's like you said, Jay," she went on, turning back to the bottles. "If Matt wants to be a paranoid princess about it, let him."

With that, the team went back to their time-wasting; Matt, huffing and grumbling under his breath, Jay, laughing quietly to himself and Leila, back to pretending to do something important. While she was almost entirely positive the strange lull in action was _not _caused by the Joker, she did wonder if she ought to ask him about any 'elaborate plans' he may or may not have been cooking up. There was a very good chance he would lie to her no matter what the answer was, but she did not think there would be any harm in asking. At least she _hoped _there would be no harm...

The sun had dipped below the horizon, the streetlights had come on an hour or so prior, and the team was about to draw straws to see which of them would make the trip to a nearby Starbucks when the calm quiet through the docking bay was shattered by an ear-piercing, shrill ring. Contrary to how it had been in the past, Leila did not waste one second in wondering dazedly whose phone it was. Both Matt and Jay looked at her expectantly as she quickly fumbled in her cargo pockets for the device. 'Unknown' was calling. Rolling her eyes, she held up a finger to her coworkers, hoping to give the impression that whoever was calling was providing a great annoyance by doing so. She felt a little like vomiting.

Once she had taken several large but discreet steps away from her colleagues to the opening of the bay, she answered, sliding a few more feet away, just to be safe. "Yes?"

"I'm dyin', Doc," came the voice of the Joker, sounding rather matter-of-fact for a person nearing death. "I need ya."

Leila paused, her eyebrows practically touching in the middle of her forehead. "You don't _sound _like you're dying..." she answered, lowering her voice when she noticed Matt glance over his shoulder in her direction.

"I pride myself on my ability to stay calm in the face of dire situations," replied Joker in a very monotone, flat voice, before it hitched back up into the more grating octave. "So you're on your way. _Great._"

Leila first looked at her watch before back at Jay and Matt, before replying. "If I don't come now you're definitely gonna die?" she asked, feeling more and more like she was really pushing his patience as there was a deep, annoyed sigh on the other end of the call.

"_Yessssss,"_ he groaned, in a pitch remarkably close to a whine. A second later, he was all business again. "Get here within fifteen minutes or you're _fired. _And I doubt you need reminding as to what 'fired' means." _Click. _

Goosebumps crawled along Leila's skin as she tucked the phone into her pocket, turning to walk over toward Matt and Jay, who were still discussing that trip to Starbucks. She sighed, shaking her head to make it seem as though that call had been completely unimportant.

As she predicted, Matt asked her first, relieving her of the duty of having to mention it. "Everything cool?" he asked, nodding toward her pocket with his head.

Leila waved a hand. "Yeah, it was my mom," she answered as airily as possible, meanwhile wondering how many of her allotted fifteen minutes she would waste lying to her friends. "She's begging me to come over there..._Swears _she's dying of food poisoning."she finished with a convincing roll of her eyes. "Do you guys mind if I head out early?"

Matt's face formed a sincere expression of concern as he turned more fully to face her. Leila felt her heart sink. "Do you want us all to go over there? I mean we're just sitting here and I'm sure-"

"No!" She answered with a bit more enthusiasm than she had intended, so she tried again, turning her volume down a bit. "No, it's really not necessary," she said calmly. "She's never been able to handle sickness well. I'm going to end up rubbing her back while she pukes. It's really nothing serious."

To her luck, Jay nodded, looking at his watch, his brow furrowed. "Yeah, you can head out. It's already nine and at this point, I'm kinda doubtin' we'll be doing anything too crazy on a Monday night. Tell your mom we hope she gets better though."

Leila had never felt as guilty in her life as she did leaving the station house. When had lying become so easy for her? That answer was simple; when she had completely abandoned her set of personal morals for a bit of cash. _At least it still makes me feel like shit, _she thought miserably. _When it doesn't, I know I'm in trouble. _

With her car once again parked in the narrow lane outside Riverside Auto Shop, Leila hesitated before climbing out, her eyes staring through the passenger seat to the bag she knew was beneath it. The urge to pretend she had never bought those things was great, but her desire to avoid more green-stained pillowcases and unexpected shower visits was greater. At least she had arrived on time to 'save' the Joker's life; perhaps this would weaken the blow she would receive if her 'gifts' were to offend him.

After stuffing the plastic bag into her kit, she climbed out and walked to the familiar rusty door, knocking and waiting for whoever would answer. A few moments later, it opened and Max stood in the way, smirking from between his lank curtains of greasy straight hair. Leila's eyes immediately dropped to the bandage wrapped around his right forearm and she motioned to it as she stepped inside behind him.

"Is it feeling alright?" she asked, in reference to the row of stitches she had applied the previous morning. Ahead of her, Max nodded but did not elaborate and instead, pointed toward the stairs leading up to the room where she knew Joker's 'lair' to be. Her stomach clenched. What sort of mess was she about to encounter? Was he really as hurt as he had expressed on the phone? Suddenly, she wished she had not brought the bag of toiletries in with her. The whole idea seemed more stupid than ever.

Trotting up the stairs, Leila could feel her heart banging hard on the inside of her ribcage, her mind conjuring up images of the Joker with his small intestine exposed, a few fingers missing, or a bullet hole in his chest. It was one thing to treat those sorts of wounds with an entire ambulance and team of fellow professionals at her disposal. Doing it all herself and expecting to live through the experience seemed foolish to the point of insanity, as surely, the Joker would summon enough strength to cut her throat or blow her brains out if he sensed his wounds were beyond her capabilities. Swallowing hard on the increasingly familiar lump in her throat, she continued until she found herself in the doorway to the dimly lit 'bedroom', where she found her patient, already seated, waiting, in his rickety, rolling desk chair. A wad of brown, generic paper towel was wrapped around his middle finger.

"What's up?" she asked, hurrying into the room and setting her kit down on the cluttered desk.

Across from her, Joker sat up in his chair, rolling his shoulders to shrug off his temporarily clean, green vest before tossing it carelessly onto the dingy mattress behind him. "I uh-" he began, frowning at his wrapped finger as he held it out in front of him. "-had a little _accident, _I guess you could say."

Leila glanced over her shoulder at him as she pulled on a pair of gloves, the apparent urgency of the situation causing her hands to tremble more than she would have liked. "Alright, come closer to the light so I can see it."

Using only his long legs, Joker wheeled himself closer to the desk, wearing an odd, smug sort of smirk as he placed his hand on the surface. She ignored his expression for the time being, hoping to look as calm and professional as possible while she turned his wrist with her fingers, so she could slowly, carefully begin unwinding the paper towel.

However, the more she uncovered his finger, the more she noticed a very suspicious lack of blood, until finally, she was left staring down at a small, shallow cut along the inside middle knuckle of his finger. Her hands dropped to her sides with a resounding plop as she straightened up to stare down into the Joker's glistening, black-ringed eyes.

The scarred corners of his mouth twitched as he clearly struggled against the urge to laugh at her expression. "What?" he asked in a tone no one could ever believe was innocent.

Leila motioned at his hand, laying palm-up on the desk in front of him. "Are you kidding me?" she asked sharply, forgoing any attempt at disguising her annoyance. "I _lied_ to get out of work early because you said you were _dying."_

"It _huuuuuurts..." _he whined, his words interlaced with laughter as he rocked back in the chair, clutching his finger. "And you weren't doing anything important-"

"I was working!" she exclaimed, leaning forward into her kit to pull out the plastic bag. If he was going to lure her to his hovel for nothing more than a cut, then she might as well give him his damn 'gifts' before she left.

"You still are," Joker reminded her, squinting a very cheeky wink as he pointed one of his uninjured fingers at her. It seemed to Leila that he was about to go on, but was distracted by the items she was pulling from the bag and placing on the desk in front of him. His scowl was so deep, it was almost audible. "What's all this?" he asked, motioning to not one, but _two _sticks of men's deodorant.

Leila fished a green toothbrush from the bag and dropped it unceremoniously onto the desk, followed by a pair of nail clippers. "_This _is a 'stink prevention care package'," she explained, the bite to her voice still present, though not as sharp. She really could not care less at that point whether he as offended by her thoughtfulness. If he killed her for it, so be it. "You complained about only having a sink so I got you a few things." Finally, she glanced at Joker to find that his expression had completely fallen flat in the most comical way possible, his eyebrows heavy atop his eyes, his scars drooping.

His lips smacked slightly before he spoke. "With _my _money," he amended her statement, motioning with one lazy finger at the items before him. "How _very _thoughtful of me."

"Well, now you have no excuse to smell bad," she grumbled, hoping at the very least, he would use the deodorant and toothpaste. "And _luckily, _I found a new type of bandage at the store that I think will be perfect for dressing your cut."

As Joker leaned back in the chair, his black eyebrows raised in anticipation, Leila pulled a box from inside her kit and opened it, selecting one of the bandages inside. She knew the grin on her face was dangerous to wear at that moment, but she really couldn't help it. If he was going to taunt and jerk her around for no other reason than his own amusement, it was only fair that she do the same, though in a much smaller sense. Unwrapping the paper from around the bandage, she used her pinkies to spread his fingers apart until they were wide enough to wrap both sides of the elastic adhesive around the cut. She then stepped back, biting hard on her bottom lip to prevent a giggle from escaping.

It was a Barbie band-aid.

Joker brought his hand closer to his face, his scowl deepening the creased lines in his makeup as he studied the small, pink bandage around his finger, flexing and turning it to read the words _'You're a superstar!' _printed along it. Leila held her breath, watching him closely for any indication that she might need to turn and run as fast as she could. However, when he simply sighed and leaned back in the chair, shaking his head, she finally allowed one ungraceful snort of laughter to escape through her nose.

"You got some balls, Doc, I'll give ya that," he commented, eyeing her profile as she grinned to herself, removing her useless latex gloves and stowing her box of band-aids in her kit.

"I couldn't resist," she answered in a relieved sigh. As unbelievable as it seemed, she was about to leave with both eyeballs and all of her extremities in tact. "Now I'd really like to go home if that's alright with you-"

"Ah, ah," Joker cut in, his expression morphing seamlessly into the sinister, narrowed glare Leila was coming to recognize as a precursor to trouble. Her stomach dropped as she hesitated with her hand on the straps to her bag of equipment, her mouth instantly going dry when she noticed his gaze drip down over her figure and back up again to her face. His head cocked to the side, his cleaner-than-usual green hair spilling onto his shoulder with the movement. "How am I supposed to take my face off without getting my lovely bandage wet? You're all about hygiene, aren't ya?"

Leila opened her mouth to reply, but hesitated, stammering once before she finally found an answer. "Yeah, but-" She paused to swallow, attempting to force some sort of moisture into her throat to ease her words. Once again, he was displaying his proclivity for overturning her boldness.

Joker clicked his tongue behind his yellowing teeth, reaching out with his uninjured hand to hook his pointer finger into the front belt loop of her black pants. A fuzzy, lightheaded sensation suddenly filled her brain, turning her thoughts of panic to nothing more than a blank static as he pulled her closer to him, one uncertain, wobbly step at a time.

"But nothing," he finished her previous statement, his voice dropping dangerously. "You said I had no excuse to be nasty and dirty anymore and...well, you're still here." Leila was now standing directly in front of him, her knees touching the faded purple material over his own, the contact alone making her feel sick, the same overwhelming tremors she had encountered the night he had 'treated' the cuts on her back. Joker tilted his head up, his eyebrows arching as he awaited an answer that was likely never to come. His black eyes glistened as he gave her belt loop one final, firm tug. "Sit."

Leila gasped as one of his brown shoes kicked the inside of her black boot, indicating silently that she was being instructed to part her legs and sit straddled on his lap facing him. She desperately did not want to do this. Joker seemed to sense her hesitation as in the next moment, he had reached out with both hands, firmly gripping her hips before forcing her onto him. A huff of surprise and fear escaped her lungs as she reluctantly obeyed, but attempted to situate herself as far back on his knees as possible. With less than a foot between their chests, Joker nodded his head in the direction of the kit sitting on the desk behind her.

"You might need that."

Fumbling fingers reached out toward the handles of the bag as she twisted tremulously on his lap, dragging the heavy kit from the surface and onto the floor beside her where it landed with a dull, clanking thud. She extracted the same items she had used weeks ago in the ambulance; gauze and hydrogen peroxide. Her hand momentarily strayed toward the bottle of rubbing alcohol, debating whether she was foolish enough to attempt to throw this in his eyes before making a quick exit through the door. No, she could _not_ do that. The scars on his face spoke plainly of a man who was not averse to pain. It was unlikely any of his victims in the past had escaped after attempting to blind him.

Sitting up straight on his legs, Leila stared down at the first pad of gauze, her eyes straying briefly to his suspenders where the left strap fastened to his pants. She knew her callousness and stupid wit would not go unpunished, but this was not what she had been expecting. With the pad moistened and dripping peroxide, she lifted her eyes to his evil, gruesome face, where he sat watching her, his hands still rested on either side of her hips, lightly, but heavily enough to remind her they were there. Leila struggled to ignore this as she reached out toward the top corner of his face, to start at his brown hairline where the green dye had grown out.

It was a slow process at first, seeing how Leila's fingers were trembling so bad, she managed to drop two pieces of gauze in a row, though after a minute or two, she had started a gentle rhythm of wiping the greasepaint from his face in long, even motions. It was the same as it had been in the ambulance that first night; the dirty, faded white paint came away with ease, exposing his flesh-toned skin beneath it, freckled and smooth in some areas, creased with lines of normal aging in others. Joker had closed his eyes at some point and if he had not been drumming his fingers in an almost impatient manner against her hip, Leila might have guessed he had fallen asleep. The room was perfectly silent, their breathing creating the only sound, off rhythm from one another, yet slow, even. _Inhale, exhale...Inhale, exhale. _He had not said a word nor barely moved and for this, she was immensely thankful. Sitting on his lap was punishment enough without any mocking. Her heartbeat was deafening.

The gauze had reached his eyebrows, leaving a glistening, wet trail of peroxide in its wake as she rolled her finger gently across his left eyelid, taking black makeup along with it. His eyelashes and brows lightened into a shade of brown to match his natural hair as the greasepaint was removed, adding to the human appearance that she found so odd with this man. Her fear was ebbing and curiosity taking its place as she watched more and more of his face become visible to her, each time the gauze passed over his skin. However, a new apprehension was bubbling to the surface as she wiped white paint from the bridge of his nose.

How many people had seen the Joker without his characteristic mask of makeup? What was more, how many of _those _people had lived to talk about it? In the ambulance on the night of his original capture, Leila had not been forced to remove all of it, having stopped just shy of his scars and right eye. Was he really allowing her to see his naked face? What were the chances that Leila would be allowed to leave on her own volition after this? Swallowing down the urge to panic, she continued with her ministrations, glancing down to wet a new piece of gauze.

As her fingers resumed contact with his face, Leila gave a start of surprise when Joker shifted his weight beneath her, rocking to the side slightly. It had been so long since he had moved that Leila had nearly forgotten she was sitting on his lap. It seemed her mind had unconsciously decided to take her to another place, some place less dangerous and awkward, by blocking that particular thought. Joker had brought her back down to her personal hell with one simple movement and she hated him for that. A very slow, steadying breath of air escaped through her nose as she wiped the last of the white from his cheek, just millimeters above his violent scars.

This was it; she had reached the part she was most anxious to avoid. The first night she had met him, foolish fascination had opened a desire to touch his scars, see what the rippled, disfigured skin felt like beneath her gloved fingers. That night, she had been surrounded by other people, Matt, the armed guard standing over the Joker's shoulder. Now, however, she was completely alone, isolated in a small room with the same terrorist and there was _no _armed guard. What if she touched him the wrong way? Would he give her some warning, a growl or open his eyes to glare at her? His eyelids were still closed and had been that way since she had started. Leila stared at him for several long seconds as she hesitated with the wet gauze only inches from his face. She had to do it or he would wonder why she stopped, possibly even grow angry at her for making him wait.

As gently as she could, she pressed the gauze to the topmost, curved portion of the right, more symmetrical scar on his face, her gaze snapping to his eyes when she both felt and heard him take a slow, deep breath in through his nose. They were still closed. Was that sigh of boredom? Impatience? Or was he simply indicating silently that he did not hate what she was doing, giving her permission to continue? With her curiosity growing and her paranoia mounting, she went on, gliding her finger slowly, carefully along the scar toward the corner of his mouth, feeling the jagged skin ripple and curve beneath the cotton.

Ten fingers simultaneously twitched against her hips as the pad of her finger traveled along his bottom lip, pausing in the middle to wipe red makeup away from the deep, vertical scar there. Leila's eyes again shifted away from where they had focused on her movement to the loosened neckline of his blue shirt, where she saw the skin at the base of his throat erupt in a coating of small bumps. Her finger came away from his lip for only a second as she studied this reflexive, natural response from his nerves, whether from her soft touch against his scars or the chill of the peroxide, she wasn't sure and didn't care. Glancing down at her lap atop his, she noticed the same reaction along the skin of his exposed forearms, just as she had in the ambulance weeks earlier. That night, she had encountered a suspicion that he had enjoyed the feel of the cotton against his scars. Now, it seemed perfectly obvious that this was indeed the case. It was such an involuntary response to stimuli and Leila found it encouraging, the fact that he was still human enough to experience such a normal thing as goosebumps.

He shifted again beneath her weight, as if to propel her to continue. She did so immediately, hoping he did not realize what she had noticed crawling along his skin. The left scar was shorter, more malformed than the one opposite his mouth, as though the instrument had become stuck or perhaps the person inflicting the damage had given up or been stopped. There was a whole world of possibilities on the origin of these scars but honestly, Leila did not care to know. She knew that asking him would be equal to requesting a lie and there was no point in that. The scars were an enigma and she was alright with that. It seemed the Joker was too.

More irregular, uneven skin passed beneath the gauze and again, Leila caught herself staring at the raised scars. She was not wearing gloves. If she really _wanted _to, she could very easily brush a finger against one of the deep flaws in his face, experience what that sort of blemish felt like against normal skin. His eyes were still closed, so if she was ever going to do it, now was her chance. Biting her bottom lip to keep from making any sudden noises, Leila very gingerly let the tip of her middle finger pass over his left scar, fighting hard against the involuntary, automatic shiver that begged to wrack her body. However, it was not her own reaction that surprised her; it was the Joker's.

His broad chest expanded as he took a deep breath, exhaling a moment later, allowing it to escape his nose slowly. A deep hum rumbled from what seemed like the lowest reaches of his lungs. Leila held her own breath, watching his eyes in anxiety, waiting for him to open them and glare at her. He did not. Instead, he remained perfectly still, clearly waiting for her to remove the last bit of red makeup from his upper lip before moving on to his chin and jaw, where the rest of the white makeup remained. Leila continued without hesitation, finally spotting a light at the end of the tunnel. If she had made it this far without angering him or having a nervous breakdown of her own, it would be all too easy to quickly wipe the rest of his face clean. Then, and only then, would she request to leave. Leila could only hope that this would be the extent of her punishment.

His scars were now completely bare of makeup. A fresh, clean pad of peroxide-soaked gauze met the corner of his jaw near his ear, gliding along the edge to remove the white from the flesh beneath it. More freckles were revealed with her motion, and Leila chose to focus on this, rather than the fact that he was slowly moving his head against the pressure of her fingers, leaning into it as she reached the middle of his chin. It seemed silly at the time, but she could not help but feel reminded of Murphy when she scratched his cheek, grinding his face against her nails as though she could not scratch him hard enough. Leila had a feeling that the Joker's intentions were not quite as innocent as her cat's.

After copying her actions on the opposite side, she found herself staring resolutely at her pointer fingernail against the gauze, suddenly no longer interested or curious to see his face completely bare. Luckily, it seemed the Joker was not quite ready for this either as he very slowly tilted his head back, the tips of his wavy green hair sliding from his shoulders with his movement. Leila hesitated, unsure of what he was doing until her eyes found yet more white makeup just beneath the curve of his defined jaw where it met his neck. She grabbed another piece of gauze, wetting it quickly with a last spritz of peroxide before pressing it firmly to the underside of his chin. She was almost done.

As the last of the white makeup came away from his skin, Leila felt her heartbeat increasing in tempo and strength once again, practically rattling her entire body as Joker lowered his head. She was unable to look away, her gaze fastened, transfixed, on his exposed face. His eyes slowly opened, the corners of his bare lips twitching upward in a wry smirk as his gaze locked with hers. Leila felt like fainting. He was an absolute horror to behold.

The makeup seemed to accent and define every crease in his face, and without it, the Joker appeared at least five years younger, around her age perhaps. She supposed at some point in his life, he had once been attractive, the vestiges of good looks like ghostly echoes upon his scarred face, long lost in a past it seemed even he had forgotten. Chills slid up and down her spine as cold, detached brown eyes watched her take in the sight of him without his painted mask and vaguely, Leila managed to wonder if she was reacting the way he had been hoping she would. Traces of black remained, stuck, around his eyes against the lashes, the brown color of his irises deepened, intensified by it. It was perhaps a trick of the makeup that his eyes appeared black when surrounded by that color, but were revealed as a rich, chocolate brown without it. All of this she was noting, but only realizing one thing-

The Joker was even more terrifying without the makeup.

Leila gasped as the grip on her hips suddenly doubled in strength, his fingers clenching tight enough to leave bruises, his upper lip curling in a snarl that exposed the top row of his teeth, his eyes flashing as he yanked her further into his lap. A quiet, seemingly involuntary whimper of both pain and fear escaped her lungs as her legs were forced to separate further, her most private of areas brought flush against his own as her hands quickly met his heated chest, bracing herself against it in resistance.

It was unmistakable, more horrifying than it was embarrassing to feel a telltale firmness pressing against her over his lap, clearly the result of her careful ministrations, or perhaps the touch of her bare finger against his scar. He was not shy about it, nor ashamed as Leila's jaw went slack in surprise, her eyes widening slightly in fear as she stared back at him, unable to tear her eyes away from his face. He did not move, he did not grind himself against her, nor did he remove his hands from her hips. He merely held her there, forcing her to feel his reaction to her, enjoying the way her eyes had dilated in utter panic, sheer terror. _This _was his torture; an effective reminder of the power he held over her, a raw demonstration of his dominance. Leila was powerless to move, his cold gaze almost daring her to try. And in that moment, one thing was made perfectly clear to her. He was not punishing her; he was _owning _her.

In an instant, Leila was back on her feet, lifted forcefully from the Joker's lap by his grip on her waist, his face an unreadable mix of emotions, ranging from a dangerous, fierce anger, even to something that looked like amusement. His eyes were glazed and dilated, dark and deep with a haunting intensity she had yet to see. His head jerked in the direction of the door.

"Get out."

This was all he needed to say for Leila to grab her bag of equipment and practically run from the room, hot tears of pain, shame, and fear welling up along her eyelids as she struggled to move down the stairs on wobbly legs. The rest of the garage was empty, Max was nowhere to be seen, but she barely took notice of anything beyond the front door and her attempt to get through it. As thick, humid air met her face, her tears spilled down her cheeks, her body unable to stop until she had rammed against the side of her car in her haste to open the door. Fumbling hands searched for her keys and only once she had located them was she able to slide into the driver's seat, hastily shoving her kit into the space beside her. As her tires spun and squealed around corners, she was finally able to think, and one thing was made perfectly clear to her.

The Joker's evil was not skin deep.

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A/N: Hope you enjoyed it! As usual, feel free to add me on Facebook if you'd like to see pictures and updates on the story (Haven QueenofMean Hunter). Big thanks to my beta, Auriellis and thanks to all of you faithful and lovely readers for your reviews and support! Also, feel free to ask me questions in your reviews as well! I won't give out spoilers but I do enjoy answering your questions on my methods, ideas for the story, explaining something that was not clear enough and so forth. So until next time, lovies! -QoM


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